CHAPTER I.

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TOLD IN THE HILLS

A NOVEL

BY MARAH ELLIS RYAN

AUTHOR OF THAT GIRL MONTANA, THE BONDWOMAN, A FLOWER OF FRANCE, ETC.

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1891 By Rand McNally & Co. Chicago.

Copyright, 1905 By Rand McNally & Co. Chicago.

All Rights Reserved

(Told in the Hills)

IN ALL REVERENCE--IN ALL GRATITUDE

TO THE FRIENDS GRANTED ME BY

THE WEST

FAYETTE SPRINGS, PENN.

KOPA MESIKA--

Nika sikhs klaksta kumtucks--

Klaksta yakwa mamook elahan,

Nika mahsie--mahsie kwanesum.

M. E. R.

Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox, or his sheep, go astray.

... Thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be

with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt

restore it to him again....

... And with all lost things of thy brother's which he hath

lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise....

In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the

sun goeth down.--Deuteronomy.

[Illustration: Mowitza forged ahead, her sturdy persistence suggesting

a realization of her own importance]

List of Illustrations

Mowitza forged ahead, her sturdy persistence suggesting a realization of

her own importance

At a sharp cut of the whip, Betty sprang forward

Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw

TOLD IN THE HILLS

PART FIRST

THE PLEDGE

"The only one of the name who is not a gentleman"; those words were

repeated over and over by a young fellow who walked, one autumn morning,

under the shade of old trees and along a street of aristocratic houses

in old New Orleans.

He would have been handsome had it not been for the absolutely wicked

expression of his face as he muttered to himself while he walked. He

looked about twenty-five--dark and tall--so tall as to be a noticeable

man among many men, and so well proportioned, and so confidently

careless in movement as not to be ungainly--the confidence of strength.

Some negroes whom he passed turned to look after him, even the whites he

met eyed him seriously. He looked like a man off a sleepless journey,

his eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard, and over all was a malignant

expression as of lurking devilishness.

He stopped at a house set back from the street, and half-smothered in

the shade of the trees and great creeping vines that flung out long arms

from the stone walls. There was a stately magnificence about its grand

entrance, and its massive proportions--it showed so plainly the

habitation of wealth. Evidently the ill-natured looking individual was

not a frequent visitor there, for he examined the house, and the numbers

about, with some indecision; then his eyes fell on the horse-block, in

the stone of which a name was carved. A muttered something, which was

not a blessing, issued from his lips as he read it, but with indecision

at an end he strode up the walk to the house. A question was answered by

the dubious-looking darky at the door, and a message was sent somewhere

to the upper regions; then the darky, looking no less puzzled, requested

the gentleman to follow him to the "Young Massa's" study. The gentleman

did so, noting with those wicked side glances of his the magnificence of

the surroundings, and stopping short before a picture of a brunette,

willowy girl that rested on an easel. The face was lovely enough to win

praise from any man, but an expression, strangely akin to that bestowed

on the carven name outside, escaped him. Through the lattice of the

window the laughter of woman came to him--as fresh and cheery as the

light of the young sun, and bits of broken sentences also--words of

banter and retort.

"Ah, but he is beautiful--your husband!" sighed a girlish voice with the

accent of France; "so impressibly charming! And so young. You two

children!"

Some gay remonstrance against childishness was returned, and then the

first voice went on:

"And the love all of one quick meeting, and one quick, grand passion

that only the priest could bring cure for? And how shy you were, and how

secret--was it not delightful? Another Juliet and her Romeo. Only it is

well your papa is not so ill-pleased."

"Why should he be? My family is no better than my husband's--only some

richer; but we never thought of that--we two. I thought of his beautiful

changeable eyes, and he thought of my black ones, and--well, I came home

to papa a wife, and my husband said only, 'I love her,' when we were

blamed for the haste and the secrecy, and papa was won--as I think every

one is, by his charming boyishness; but," with a little laugh, "he is

not a boy."

"Though he is younger than yourself?"

"Well, what then? I am twenty-three. You see we are quite an old couple,

for he is almost within a year of being as old. Come; my lord has not

yet come down. I have time to show you the roses. I am sure they are the

kind you want."

Their chatter and gaiety grew fainter as they walked away from the

window, and their playful chat added no light to the visitor's face. He

paced up and down the room with the eager restlessness of some caged

thing. A step sounded outside that brought him to a halt--a step and a

mellow voice with the sweetness of youth in it. Then the door opened and

a tall form entered swiftly, and quick words of welcome and of surprise

came from him as he held out his hand heartily.

But it was not taken. The visitor stuck his hands in the pockets of his

coat, and surveyed his host with a good deal of contempt.

Yet he was a fine, manly-looking fellow, almost as tall as his visitor,

and fairer in coloring. His hair was a warmer brown, while the other

man's was black. His eyes were frank and open, while the other's were

scowling and contracted. They looked like allegorical types of light and

darkness as they stood there, yet something in the breadth of forehead

and form of the nose gave a suggestion of likeness to their faces.

The younger one clouded indignantly as he drew back his offered hand.

"Why, look here, old fellow, what's up?" he asked hastily, and then the

indignation fled before some warmer feeling, and he went forward

impulsively, laying his hand on the other's arm.

"Just drop that," growled his visitor, "I didn't come here for that sort

of thing, but for business--yes--you can bet your money on that!"

His host laughed and dropped into a chair.

"Well, you don't look as if you come on a pleasure trip," he agreed,

"and I think you might look a little more pleasant, considering the

occasion and--and--everything. I thought father would come down sure,

when I wrote I was married, but I didn't expect to see anyone come in

this sort of a temper. What is it? Has your three-year-old come in last

in the fall race, or have you lost money on some other fellow's stock,

and what the mischief do you mean by sulking at me?"

"It isn't the three-year-old, and it isn't money lost," and the dark

eyes were watching every feature of the frank young face; "the business

I've come on is--you."

"Look here," and the young fellow straightened up with the conviction

that he had struck the question, "is it because of my--marriage?"

"Rather." Still those watchful eyes never changed.

"Well," and the fair face flushed a little, "I suppose it wasn't just

the correct thing; but you're not exactly the preacher for correct

deportment, are you?" and the words, though ironical, were accompanied

by such a bright smile that no offense could be taken from them. "But

I'll tell you how it happened. Sit down. I would have sent word before,

if I'd suspected it myself, but I didn't. Now don't look so glum, old

fellow. I never imagined you would care. You see we were invited to make

up a yachting party and go to Key West. We never had seen each other

until the trip, and--well, we made up for the time we had lost in the

rest of our lives; though I honestly did not think of getting

married--any more than you would. And then, all at once, what little

brains I had were upset. It began in jest, one evening in Key West, and

the finale of it was that before we went to sleep that night we were

married. No one knew it until we got back to New Orleans, and then I

wrote home at once. Now, I'm ready for objections."

"When you left home you were to be back in two months--it is four now.

Why didn't you come?"

"Well, you know I was offered the position of assistant here to Doctor

Grenier; that was too good to let go."

"Exactly; but you could have got off, I reckon, to have spent your

devoted father's birthday at home--if you had wanted to."

"He was your father first," was the good-humored retort.

"Why didn't you come home?"

There was a hesitation in the younger face. For the first time he looked

ill at ease.

"I don't know why I should give you any reason except that I did not

want to," he returned, and then he arose, walking back and forth a

couple of times across the room and stopping at a window, with his back

to his visitor. "But I will," he added, impulsively. "I stayed away on

account of--Annie."

The dark eyes fairly blazed at the name.

"Yes?"

"I--I was a fool when I was home last spring," continued the young

fellow, still with his face to the window. "I had never realized before

that she had grown up or that she was prettier than anyone I knew, until

you warned me about it--you remember?"

"I reckon I do," was the grim reply.

"Well, I tried to be sensible. I did try," he protested, though no

contradiction was made. "And after I left I concluded I had better stay

away until--well, until we were both a little older and more

level-headed."

"It's a pity you didn't reach that idea before you left," said the other

significantly.

"What!"

"And before you turned back for that picture you had forgotten."

"What do you mean" and for the first time a sort of terror shone in his

face--a dread of the dark eyes that were watching him so cruelly. "Tell

me what it is you mean, brother."

"You can just drop that word," was the cold remark. "I haven't any

relatives to my knowledge. Your father told me this morning I was the

only one of the name who was not a gentleman. I reckon I'll get along

without either father or brother for the rest of my life. The thing I

came here to see about is the homestead. It is yours and mine--or will

be some day. What do you intend doing with your share?"

"Well, I'm not ready to make my will yet," said the other, still looking

uneasy as he waited further explanations.

"I rather think you'll change your mind about that, and fix it right

here, and now. To-day I want you to transfer every acre of your share to

Annie."

"What?"

"To insure her the home you promised your mother she should always

have."

"But look here--"

"To insure it for her and--her child."

The face at the window was no longer merely startled, it was white as

death.

"Good God! You don't mean that!" he gasped. "It is not true. It can't be

true!"

"You contemptible cur! You damnable liar!" muttered the other through

his teeth. "You sit there like the whelp that you are, telling me of

this woman you have married, with not a thought of that girl up in

Kentucky that you had a right to marry. Shooting you wouldn't do her any

good, or I wouldn't leave the work undone. Now I reckon you'll make the

transfer."

The other had sat down helplessly, with his head in his hands.

"I can't believe it--I can't believe it," he repeated heavily. "Why--why

did she not write to me?"

"It wasn't an easy thing to write, I reckon," said the other bitterly,

"and she waited for you to come back. She did send one letter, but you

were out on the water with your fine friends, and it was returned. The

next we heard was the marriage. Word got there two days ago, and

then--she told me."

"You!" and he really looked unsympathetic enough to exempt him from

being chosen as confidant of heart secrets.

"Yes; and she shan't be sorry for it if I can help it. What about that

transfer?"

"I'll make it;" and the younger man rose to his feet again with eyes in

which tears shone. "I'll do anything under God's heaven for her! I've

never got rid of the sight of her face. It--it hoodooed me. I couldn't

get rid of it!--or of remorse. I thought it best to stay away, we were

so young to marry, and there was my profession to work for yet; and then

on top of all my sensible plans there came that invitation on the

yacht--and so you know the whole story; and now--what will become of

her?"

"You fix that transfer, and I'll look after her."

"You! I don't deserve this of you, and--"

"No; I don't reckon you do," returned the other, tersely; "and when

you--damn your conceit!--catch me doing that or anything else on your

account, just let me know. It isn't for either one of you, for that

matter. It's because I promised."

The younger dropped his arms and head on the table.

"You promised!" he groaned. "I--I promised as well as you, and mother

believed me--trusted me, and, now--oh, mother! mother!"

His remorseful emotion did not stir the least sympathy in his listener,

only a chilly unconcern as to his feelings in the matter.

"You, you cried just about that way when you made the promise," he

remarked indifferently. "It was wasted time and breath then, and I

reckon it's the same thing now. You can put in the rest of your life in

the wailing and gnashing of teeth business if you want to--you might get

the woman you married to help you, if you tell her what she has for a

husband. But just now there are other things to attend to. I am leaving

this part of the country in less than six hours, and this thing must be

settled first. I want your promise to transfer to Annie all interest you

have in the homestead during your life-time, and leave it to her by will

in case the world is lucky enough to get rid of you."

"I promise."

His head was still on the table; he did not look up or resent in any way

the taunts thrown at him. He seemed utterly crushed by the revelations

he had listened to.

"And another thing I want settled is, that you are never again to put

foot on that place or in that house, or allow the woman you married to

go there, that you will neither write to Annie nor try to see her."

"But there might be circumstances--"

"There are no circumstances that will keep me from shooting you like the

dog you are, if you don't make that promise, and keep it," said the

other deliberately. "I don't intend to trust to your word. But you'll

never find me too far out of the world to get back here if you make it

necessary for me to come. And the promise I expect is that you'll never

set foot on the old place again without my consent--" and the phrase was

too ironical to leave much room for hope.

"I promise. I tell you I'll do anything to make amends," he moaned

miserably.

"Your whole worthless life wouldn't do that!" was the bitter retort.

"Now, there is one thing more I want understood," and his face became

more set and hardened; "Annie and her child are to live in the house

that should be theirs by right, and they are to live there respected--do

you hear? That man you call father has about as much heart in him as a

sponge. He would turn her out of the house if he knew the truth, and in

this transfer of yours he is to know nothing of the reason--understand

that. He is quite ready to think it prompted by your generous,

affectionate heart, and the more he thinks that, the better it will be

for Annie. You will have a chance to pose for the rest of your life as

one of the most honorable of men, and the most loyal to a dead mother's

trust," and a sound that would have been a laugh but for its bitterness

broke from him as he walked to the door; "that will suit you, I reckon.

One more lie doesn't matter, and the thing I expect you to do is to make

that transfer to-day and send it to Annie with a letter that anyone

could read, and be none the wiser--the only letter you're ever to write

her. You have betrayed that trust; it's mine now."

"And you'll be worth it," burst out the other heart-brokenly; "worth a

dozen times over more than I ever could be if I tried my best. You'll

take good care of her, and--and--good God! If I could only speak to her

once!"

"If you do, I'll know it, and I'll kill you!" said the man at the door.

He was about to walk out when the other arose bewilderedly.

"Wait," he said, and his livid face was convulsed pitifully. He was so

little more than a boy. "This that you have told me has muddled my head.

I can't think. I know the promises, and I'll keep them. If shooting

myself would help her, I'd do that; but you say you are leaving the

country, and Annie is to live on at the old place, and--and yet be

respected? I can't understand how, with--under the--the circumstances.

I--"

"No, I don't reckon you can," scowled the other, altogether unmoved by

the despairing eyes and broken, remorseful words. "It isn't natural that

you should understand a man, or how a man feels; but Annie's name shall

be one you had a right to give her four months ago--"

"What are you saying?" broke in the other with feverish intensity; "tell

me! tell me what it is you mean!"

"I mean that she shan't be cheated out of a name for herself and child

by your damned rascality! Her name for the rest of her life will be the

same as yours--just remember that when you forward that transfer. She is

my wife. We were married an hour before I started."

Then the door closed, and the dark, malignant looking fellow stalked out

into the morning sunlight, and through the scented walk where late

lillies nodded as he passed. He seemed little in keeping with their

fragrant whiteness, for he looked not a whit less scowlingly wicked than

on his entrance; and of some men working on the lawn, one said to

another:

"Looks like he got de berry debbel in dem snappin' eyes--see how dey

shine. Mighty rakish young genelman to walk out o' dat doah--look like

he been on a big spree."

And when the bride and her friend came chattering in, with their hands

full of roses, they found a strange, unheard-of thing had happened. The

tall young husband, so strong, so long acclimated, had succumbed to the

heat of the morning, or the fragrance of the tuberose beside him, and

had fallen in a fainting fit by the door.

PART SECOND

"A CULTUS CORRIE"

CHAPTER I.

ON SCOT'S MOUNTAIN.

"The de'il tak' them wi' their weeman folk, whose nerves are too

delicate for a squaw man, or an Injun guide. I'd tak' no heed o' them if

I was well, an' I'll do less now I'm plagued wi' this reminder o' that

grizzly's hug. It gives me many's the twinge whilst out lookin' to the

traps."

"Where's your gallantry, MacDougall?" asked a deep, rather musical voice

from the cabin door; "and your national love for the 'winsome sex,' as

I've heard you call it? If ladies are with them you can't refuse."

"Can I not? Well, I can that same now," said the first speaker,

emphasizing his speech by the vim with which he pitched a broken-handled

skillet into the cupboard--a cupboard made of a wooden box. "Mayhaps you

think I haven't seen a white woman these six months, I'll be a breakin'

my neck to get to their camp across there. Well, I will not; they may be

all very fine, no doubt--folk from the East; but ye well know a lot o'

tenderfeet in the bush are a sight worse to tak' the care of than the

wild things they'll be tryin' to hunt. 'A man's a fool who stumbles over

the same stone twice,' is an old, true sayin', an' I know what I'm

talkin' of. It's four years this autumn since I was down in the Walla

Walla country, an' there was a fine party from the East, just as these

are; an' they would go up into the Blue Mountains, an' they would have

me for a guide; an' if the Lord'll forgive me for associatin' with sich

a pack o' lunatics for that trip, I'll never be caught wi' the same bait

again."

"What did they do to you?" asked the voice, with a tinge of amusement in

it.

"To me? They did naught to me but pester me wi' questions of insane

devisin'. Scarce a man o' them could tether a beast or lasso one that

was astray. They had a man servant, a sort o' flunky, to wait on them

and he just sat around like a bump on a log, and looked fearsomely for

Injuns an' grizzlies. They would palaver until all hours in the night,

about the scientific causes of all things we came across. Many a good

laugh I might have had, if I had na been disgusted wi' the pretenses o'

the poor bodies. Why, they knew not a thing but the learnin' o' books.

They were from the East--down East, they said; that is, the Southeast, I

suppose they meant to say; and their flunky said they were well-to-do at

home, and very learned, the poor fools! Well, I'll weary myself wi' none

others o' the same ilk."

"You're getting cranky, Mac, from being too much alone;" and the owner

of the voice lounged lazily up from the seat of the cabin door, and

stood looking in at the disgusted Scotchman, bending ever so slightly a

dark, well-shaped head that was taller than the cross-piece above the

door.

"Am I, now?" asked the old man, getting up stiffly from filling a pan of

milk for the cat. "Well, then, I have a neighbor across on the Maple

range that is subject o' late to the same complaint, but from a wide

difference o' reason;" and he nodded his head significantly at the man

in the door, adding: "An' there's a subject for a debate, Jack Genesee,

whether loneliness is worse on the disposition than the influence o'

wrong company."

Jack Genesee straightened out of his lounging attitude, and stepped back

from the door-way with a decision that would impress a man as meaning

business.

"None o' that, MacDougall," he said curtly, dropping his hand with a

hillman's instinct to the belt where his revolvers rested. "I reckon you

and I will be better friends through minding our own business and

keeping to our own territory in future;" and whistling to a beautiful

brown mare that was browsing close to the cabin, he turned to mount her,

when the old man crossed the floor quickly and laid a sinewy, brown hand

on his arm.

"Bide a bit, Genesee," he said, his native accent always creeping upward

in any emotion. "Friends are rare and scarce in this Chinook land.

You're a bit hasty in your way, and mayhaps I'm a bit curious in mine;

but I'll no let ye leave Davy MacDougall's like that just for the want

o' sayin' I'm regretful at havin' said more than I should o' you and

yours. I canna lose a friend o' four years for a trifle like that."

The frankness of the old man's words made the other man drop the bridle

and turn back with outstretched hand.

"That's all right, Mac," he said, heartily; "say no more about it. I am

uglier than the devil to get along with sometimes, and you're about

straight when you say I'm a crank; only--well, it's nobody's fault but

my own."

"No, o' course not," said MacDougall in a conciliatory tone as he went

back to his dish-washing at the table--the dishes were tin pans and

cups, and the dish-pan was an iron pot--"to be sure not; but the

half-breeds are pizen in a man's cabin, an' that Talapa, wi' the name

that's got from a prairie wolf an' the Injun de'il, is well called--a

full-blood Injun is easier to manage, my lad; an' then," he added,

quizzically, "I'm but givin' ye the lay o' the land where I've fought

myself, an' mayhaps got wounded."

The "lad," who was about thirty-five, laughed heartily at this

characteristic confession. There was evidently some decided incongruity

between the old Scotchman's statement and his quaint housewifery, as he

wrapped a cloth reduced to strings around a fork and washed out a

coffee-pot with the improvised mop. Something there was in it that this

man Genesee appreciated, and his continued laughter drew the beautiful

mare again to his side, slipping her velvety nose close to his ear, and

muzzling there like a familiar spirit that had a right to share her

master's emotions.

"All right, Mowitza," he said in a promising tone; "we'll hit the bush

by and by. But old sulky here is slinging poisoned arrows at our

Kloocheman. We can't stand that, you know. We don't like cooking our own

grub, do we, Mowitza? Shake your head and tell him 'halo'--that's

right. Skookum Kiutan! Skookum, Mowitza!"

And the man caressed the silky brown head, and murmured to her the

Indian jargon of endearment and praise, and the mare muzzled closer and

whinnied an understanding of her master. MacDougall put away the last

pan, threw a few knots of cedar on the bit of fire in the stone

fire-place, and came to the door just as the sun, falling back of the

western mountains, threw a flood of glory about the old cabin of the

mountaineer. The hill-grass back of it changed from uncertain green to

spears of amber as the soft September winds stole through it. Away below

in the valley, the purple gloom of dark spruces was burying itself in

night's shadows. Here and there a poison-vine flashed back defiance

under its crimson banners, and again a white-limbed aspen shone like a

shapely ghost from between lichen-covered bowlders. But slowly the

gloaming crept upward until the shadow-line fell at the cabin door, and

then up, up, past spruce and cedar, past the scrub of the dwarf growths,

past the invisible line that the snakes will not cross, on up to the

splintered crest, where the snows glimmer in the sunshine, and about

which the last rays of the sun linger and kiss and fondle, long after a

good-bye has been given to the world beneath.

Such was but one of the many recurring vistas of beauty which the

dwellers of the northern hills are given to delight in--if they care to

open their eyes and see the glorious smile with which the earth ever

responds to the kiss of God.

MacDougall had seen many of the grand panoramas which day and night on

Scot's mountain give one, and he stood in the door unheeding this one.

His keen eyes, under their shaggy brows, were directed to the younger

man's bronzed face.

"There ye go!" he said, half peevishly; "ye jabber Chinook to that

Talapa and to the mare until it's a wonder ye know any English at all;

an' when ye be goin' back where ye belong, it'll be fine, queer times

ye'll have with your ways of speech."

Genesee only laughed shortly--an Indian laugh, in which there is no

melody.

"I don't reckon I belong anywhere, by this time, except in this Chinook

region; consequently," he added, looking up in the old man's interested

face, "I'm not likely to be moving anywhere, if that's what you're

trying to find out."

MacDougall made a half-dissenting murmur against trying to find out

anything, but Genesee cut him short without ceremony.

"The fact is, Mac," he continued; "you are a precious old galoot--a

regular nervous old numbskull. You've been as restless as a newly-caught

grizzly ever since I went down to Coeur d'Alene, two weeks ago--afraid

I was going to cut loose from Tamahnous Peak and pack my traps and go

back to the diggin's; is that it? Don't lie about it. The whole trip

wasn't worth a good lie, and all it panned out for me was empty

pockets."

"Lord! lad, ye canna mean to say ye lost--'

"Every damned red," finished Mr. Genesee complacently.

"An' how--"

"Cards and mixed drinks," he said, laconically. "Angels in the

wine-rooms, and a slick individual at the table who had a better poker

hand than I had. How's that as a trade for six months' work? How does it

pan out in the balance with half-breeds?"

Evidently it staggered MacDougall. "It is no much like ye to dissipate,

Genesee," he said, doubtfully. "O' course a man likes to try his chance

on the chips once in a way, and to the kelpies o' the drinkin' places

one must leave a few dollars, but the mixin' o' drinks or the muddlin'

o' the brains is no natural to ye; it may be a divarsion after the hill

life, but there's many a kind that's healthier."

"You're a confounded old humbug," said Genesee coolly; "you preach

temperance to me, and get drunk as a fiddler all alone here by

yourself--not much Scotch in that way of drinking, I can tell you.

Hello! who's that?"

MacDougall leaned forward and peered down the path where the sound of a

horse's feet were heard coming around the bend.

"It's that man o' Hardy's comin' again about a guide, I have na doubt.

I'll send him across Seven-mile Creek to Tyee-Kamooks. They can get a

Siwash guide from him, or they can lose themsel's for all me," he said,

grumpily, incited thereto, no doubt, by Genesee's criticism of his

habits. He often grumbled that his friend from the Maple range was

mighty "tetchy" about his own faults, and mighty cool in his opinions of

others.

A dark, well-built horse came at an easy, swinging pace out of the gloom

of the spruce boughs and over the green sward toward the cabin; his

rider, a fair, fine-looking fellow, in a ranchman's buckskin suit,

touched his hat ever so lightly in salute, a courtesy the others

returned, Genesee adding the Chinook word that is either salutation or

farewell, "Klahowya, stranger," and the old man giving the more

English speech of "Good evening; won't ye light, stranger?"

"No; obliged to you, but haven't time. I suppose I'm speaking to Mr.

MacDougall," and he took his eyes from the tall, dark form of Genesee to

address his speech to the old trapper.

"Yes, I'm Davy MacDougall, an' I give a guess you're from the new sheep

ranch that's located down Kootenai Park; you're one of Hardy's men."

"No; I'm Hardy."

"Are ye, now?" queried the old fellow in surprise. "I expected to see an

older man--only by the cause of hearin' you were married, I suppose.

Well, now, I'm right glad to meet wi' a new neighbor--to think of a

ranch but a bit of ten miles from Scot's Mountain, an' a white family on

it, too! Will ye no' light an' have a crack at a pipe an' a glass?"

Hardy himself was evidently making a much better impression on

MacDougall than the messenger who had come to the cabin in the morning.

"No, partner, not any for me," answered the young ranchman, but with so

pleasant a negative that even a Westerner could not but accept

graciously such a refusal. "I just rode up from camp myself to see you

about a guide for a small party over into the west branch of the

Rockies. Ivans, who came to see you this morning, tells me that you are

disabled yourself--"

"Yes; that is, I had a hug of a grizzly two weeks back that left the

ribs o' my right side a bit sore; but--"

The old man hesitated; evidently his reluctance to act as guide to the

poor fools was weakening. This specimen of an Eastern man was not at all

the style of the tourists who had disgusted him so.

"An' so I told your man I thought I could na guide you," he continued

in a debatable way, at which Hardy's blonde mustache twitched

suspiciously, and Genesee stooped to fasten a spur that had not needed

attention before; for the fact was Mac had felt "ower cranky" that

morning, and the messenger had been a stupid fellow who irritated him

until he swore by all the carpenter's outfit of a certain workman in

Nazareth that he would be no guide for "weemen folk and tenderfeet" in

the hills. His vehemence had caused the refusal of Ivans to make a

return trip, and Hardy, remembering Ivans' account, was amused, and had

an idea that the dark, quiet fellow with the musical voice was amused as

well.

"Yes," agreed the stranger; "I understood you could not come, but I

wanted to ask if you could recommend an Indian guide. I had Jim Kale

engaged--he's the only white man I know in this region; the men on my

place are all from south of the Flathead country. He sent me word

yesterday he couldn't come for a week--confound these squaw men! He's

gone to hunt caribou with his squaw's people, so I brought my party so

far myself, but am doubtful of the trail ahead. One of the ladies is

rather nervous about Indians, and that prevented me from getting a guide

from them at first; but if we continue, she must accustom herself to

Montana surroundings."

"That's the worst o' the weemen folk when it comes to the hills," broke

in MacDougall, "they've over easy to be frightened at shadows; a roof

an' four walls is the best stoppin' place for a' o' them."

The young ranchman laughed easily.

"I don't believe you have known many of our Kentucky women, Mr.

MacDougall; they are not hot-house plants, by any means."

Genesee pushed a wide-brimmed light hat back from his face a little, and

for the first time joined the conversation.

"A Kentucky party, did you say, sir?" he queried, with half-careless

interest.

"Yes," said Hardy, turning toward him; "relatives of mine from back

East, and I wanted to give them a taste of Montana hill life, and a

little hunting. But I can't go any farther into the hills alone,

especially as there are three ladies in the party; and a man can't take

many risks when he has them to consider."

"That's so," said Genesee, with brief sympathy; "big gang?"

"No--only six of us. My sister and her husband, and a cousin, a young

lady, are the strangers. Then one of the men off my ranch who came to

look after the pack-mules, and my wife and self. I have an extra horse

for a guide if I can pick one up."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you could," said Genesee reflectively; "the

woods are full of them, if you want Indian guides, and if you

don't--well, it doesn't seem the right thing to let visitors leave the

country disappointed, especially ladies, and I reckon I might take

charge of your outfit for a week or so."

MacDougall nearly dropped his pipe in his surprise at the offer.

"Well, I'll be--" he began; but Genesee turned on him.

"What's the matter with that?" he asked, looking at Mac levelly, with a

glance that said: "Keep your mouth shut." "If I want to turn guide and

drop digging in that hill back there, why shouldn't I? It'll be the

'divarsion' you were suggesting a little while back; and if Mr. Hardy

wants a guide, give me a recommend, can't you?"

"Do you know the country northwest of here?" asked Hardy eagerly. It was

plain to be seen he was pleased at his "find." "Do you live here in the

Chinook country? You may be a neighbor of mine, but I haven't the

pleasure of knowing your name."

"That's Mac's fault," said the other fellow coolly; "he's master of

ceremonies in these diggin's, and has forgotten his business. They call

me Genesee Jack mostly, and I know the Kootenai hills a little."

"Indeed, then, he does Mr. Hardy," said MacDougall, finding his voice.

"Ye'll find no Siwash born on the hills who knows them better than does

Genesee, only he's been bewitched like, by picks and shovels an' a gulch

in the Maple range, for so long it's a bit strange to see him actin' as

guide; but you're a lucky man to be gettin' him, Mr. Hardy, I'll tell ye

that much."

"I am willing to believe it," said Hardy frankly. "Could you start at

once with us, in the morning?"

"I reckon so."

"I will furnish you a good horse," began the ranchman; but Genesee

interrupted, shaking his head with a gesture of dissent.

"No, I think not," he said in the careless, musical voice that yet could

be so decided in its softness; and he whistled softly, as a cricket

chirrups, and the brown mare came to him with long, cat-like movements

of the slender limbs, dropping her head to his shoulder.

"This bit of horse-flesh is good enough for me," he said, slipping a

long, well-shaped hand over the silky cheek; "an' where I go, Mowitza

goes--eh, pet?"

The mare whinnied softly as acknowledgment of the address, and Hardy

noticed with admiration the fine points in her sinewy, supple frame.

"Mowitza," he repeated. "That in Chinook means the deer, does it not--or

the elk; which is it? I haven't been here long enough to pick up much of

the jargon."

"Well, then, ye'll be hearin' enough of it from Genesee," broke in

MacDougall. "He'll be forgettin' his native language in it if he lives

here five years longer; an'--"

"There, you've said enough," suggested Genesee. "After giving a fellow a

recommend for solid work, don't spoil it by an account of his fancy

accomplishments. You're likely to overdo it. Yes, Mowitza means a deer,

and this one has earned her name. We'll both be down at your camp by

sun-up to-morrow; will that do?"

"It certainly will," answered Hardy in a tone of satisfaction. "And the

folks below will be mighty glad to know a white man is to go with us.

Jim Kale rather made them doubtful of squaw men, and my sister is timid

about Indians as steady company through the hills. I must get back and

give them the good news. At sun-up to-morrow, Mr. Genesee?"

"At sun-up to-morrow."

CHAPTER II.

AS THE SUN ROSE.

Do you know the region of the Kootenai that lies in the northwest corner

of a most northwestern state--where the "bunch-grass" of the grazing

levels bends even now under a chance wild stallion and his harem of

silken-coated mates; where fair upland "parks" spread back from the cool

rush of the rivers; where the glittering peaks of the mountains glow at

the rise and fall of night like the lances of a guard invincible, that

lift their grand silence as a barrier against the puny strife of the

outside world?

Do you know what it is to absorb the elastic breath of the mountains at

the awakening of day? To stand far above the levels and watch the faint

amethystine peaks catch one by one their cap of gold flung to them from

an invisible sun? To feel the blood thrill with the fever of an infinite

possession as the eyes look out alone over a seemingly creatureless

scene of vastness, of indefiniteness of all vague promise, in the

growing light of day? To feel the cool crispness of the heights,

tempered by the soft "Chinook" winds? To feel the fresh wet dews of the

morning on your hands and on your face, and to know them in a dim way

odorous--odorous with the virginity of the hills--of the day dawn, with

all the sweet things of form or feeling that the new day brings into new

life?

A girl on Scot's Mountain seemed to breathe in all that intoxication of

the hill country, as she stood on a little level, far above the smoke of

the camp-fire, and watched the glowing, growing lights on the far peaks.

A long time she had stood there, her riding-dress gathered up above the

damp grass, her cap in her hand, and her brown hair tossing in a bath of

the winds. Twice a shrill whistle had called her to the camp hidden by

the spruce boughs, but she had only glanced down toward the valley,

shook her head mutinously, and returned to the study of her panorama;

for it seemed so entirely her own--displaying its beauties for her sole

surprisal--that it seemed discourteous to ignore it or descend to lower

levels during that changing carnival of color. So she just nodded a

negative to her unseen whistler below, determined not to leave, even at

the risk of getting the leavings of the breakfast--not a small item to a

young woman with a healthy, twenty-year-old appetite.

Something at last distracted that wrapt attention. What was it? She

heard no sound, had noticed no movement but the stir of the wind in the

leaves and the grasses, yet she shrugged her shoulders with a twitchy

movement of being disturbed and not knowing by what. Then she gathered

her skirts a little closer in her hand and took a step or so backward in

an uncertain way, and a moment later clapped the cap on her tumbled

hair, and turned around, looking squarely into the face of a stranger

not a dozen steps from her, who was watching her with rather sombre,

curious eyes. Their steady gaze accounted for the mesmeric disturbance,

but her quick turn gave her revenge, for he flushed to the roots of his

dark hair as she caught him watching her like that, and he did not speak

just at first. He lifted his wide-brimmed hat, evidently with the

intention of greeting her, but his tongue was a little unruly, and he

only looked at her, and she at him.

They stood so in reality only a flash of seconds, though it seemed a

continuous stare of minutes to both; then the humorous side of the

situation appealed to the girl, and her lips twitched ever so slightly

as she recovered her speech first and said demurely:

"Good morning, sir."

"How are you?" he returned; and having regained the use of his tongue,

he added, in an easier way: "You'll excuse me, lady, if I sort of scared

you?"

"Oh, no, I was not at all startled," she answered hastily, "only a

little surprised."

"Yes," he agreed, "so was I. That's why I stood there a-staring at

you--couldn't just make out if you were real or a ghost, though I never

before saw even the ghost of a white woman in this region."

"And you were watching to see if I would vanish into thin air like a

Macbeth witch, were you?" she asked quizzically.

He might be on his native heath and she an interloper, but she was much

the most at her ease--evidently a young lady of adaptability and

considerable self-possession. His eyes had grown wavering and uncertain

in their glances, and that flush made him still look awkward, and she

wondered if Macbeth's witches were not unheard-of individuals to him,

and she noticed with those direct, comprehensive eyes that a suit of

buckskin can be wonderfully becoming to tall, lazy-looking men, and that

wide, light sombreros have quite an artistic effect as a frame for dark

hair and eyes; and through that decision she heard him say:

"No. I wasn't watching you for anything special, only if you were a real

woman, I reckoned you were prospecting around looking for the trail,

and--and so I just waited to see, knowing you were a stranger."

"And is that all you know about me?" she asked mischievously. "I know

much more than that about you."

"How much?"

"Oh, I know you're just coming from Davy MacDougall's, and you are going

to Hardy's camp to act as commander-in-chief of the eastern tramps in

it, and your name is Mr. Jack Genesee--and--and--that is all."

"Yes, I reckon it is," he agreed, looking at her in astonishment. "It's

a good deal, considering you never saw me before, and I don't know--"

"And you don't know who I am," she rejoined easily. "Well, I can tell

you that, too. I'm a wanderer from Kentucky, prospecting, as you would

call it, for something new in this Kootenai country of yours, and my

name is Rachel Hardy."

"That's a good, square statement," he smiled, put at his ease by the

girl's frankness. "So you're one of the party I'm to look after on this

cultus corrie?"

"Yes, I'm one of them--Cousin Hardy says the most troublesome of the

lot, because I always want to be doing just the things I've no business

to"; then she looked at him and laughed a little. "I tell you this at

once," she added, "so you will know what a task you have undertaken, and

if you're timid, you might back out before it's too late--are you

timid?"

"Do I look it?"

"N--no"; but she didn't give him the scrutiny she had at first--only a

swift glance and a little hurry to her next question: "What was that

queer term you used when speaking of our trip--cul--cultus?"

"Oh, cultus corrie! That's Chinook for pleasure ride."

"Is it? What queer words they have. Cousin Harry was telling me it was a

mongrel language, made up of Indian, French, English, and any stray

words from other tongues that were adjustable to it. Is it hard to

learn?"

"I think not--I learned it."

"What becoming modesty in that statement!" she laughed quizzically.

"Come, Mr. Jack Genesee, suppose we begin our cultus corrie by eating

breakfast together; they've been calling me for the past half-hour."

He whistled for Mowitza, and Miss Rachel Hardy recognized at once the

excellence of this silken-coated favorite.

"Mowitza; what a musical name!" she remarked as she followed the new

guide to the trail leading down the mountain. "It sounds Russian--is

it?"

"No; another Chinook word--look out there; these stones are bad ones to

balance on, they're too round, and that gully is too deep below to make

it safe."

"I'm all right," she announced in answer to the warning as she amused

herself by hopping bird-like from one round, insecure bowlder to

another, and sending several bounding and crashing into the gully that

cut deep into the heart of the mountain. "I can manage to keep my feet

on your hills, even if I can't speak their language. By the way, I

suppose you don't care to add Professor of Languages to your other

titles, do you, Mr. Jack Genesee?"

"I reckon I'm in the dark now, Miss, sort of blind-fold--can't catch

onto what you mean."

"Oh, I was just thinking I might take up the study of Chinook while out

here, and go back home overwhelming the natives by my novel

accomplishment." And she laughed so merrily at the idea, and looked so

quizzically at Genesee Jack's dark, serious face, that he smiled in

sympathy.

They had only covered half the trail leading down to the camp, but

already, through the slightly strange and altogether unconventional

meeting, she found herself making remarks to him with the freedom of a

long-known chum, and rather enjoying the curious, puzzled look with

which he regarded her when she was quick enough to catch him looking at

her at all.

"Stop a moment," she said, just as the trail plunged from the open face

of the mountain into the shadow of spruce and cedar. "You see this every

morning, I suppose, but it is a grand treat to me. See how the light has

crept clear down to the level land now. I came up here long before there

was a sign of the sun, for I knew the picture would be worth it. Isn't

it beautiful?"

Her eyes, alight with youth and enthusiasm, were turned for a last look

at the sun-kissed country below, to which she directed his attention

with one bare, outstretched hand.

"Yes, it is," he agreed; but his eyes were not on the valley of the

Kootenai, but on the girl's face.

CHAPTER III.

WHAT IS A SQUAW MAN?

"Rache, I want you to stop it." The voice had an insinuating tone, as if

it would express "will you stop it?"

The speaker was a chubby, matronly figure, enthroned on a hassock of

spruce boughs, while the girl stretched beside her was drawing the

fragrant spikes of green, bit by bit, over closed eyes and smiling; only

the mouth and chin could be seen under the green veil, but the corners

of the mouth were widening ever so little. Smiles should engender

content; they are supposed to be a voucher of sweet thoughts, but at

times they have a tendency to bring out all that is irritable in human

nature, and the chubby little woman noted that growing smile with rising

impatience.

"I am not jesting," she continued, as if there might be a doubt on that

question; "and I wish you would stop it."

"You haven't given it a name yet. Say, Clara, that sounds like an

invitation to drink, doesn't it?--a western invitation."

But her fault-finder was not going to let her escape the subject like

that.

"I am not sure it has a name," she said curtly. "No one seems to know

whether it is Genesee Jack or Jack Genesee, or whether both are not

aliases--in fact, the most equivocal sort of companion for a young girl

over these hills."

"What a tempest you raise about nothing, Clara," said the girl

good-humoredly; "one would think that I was in hourly danger of being

kidnaped by Mr. Genesee Jack--the name is picturesque in sound, and

suits him, don't you think so? But I am sure the poor man is quite

harmless, and stands much more in awe of me than I do of him."

"I believe you," assented her cousin tartly. "I never knew you to stand

in awe of anything masculine, from your babyhood. You are a born flirt,

for all your straightforward, independent ways. Oh, I know you."

"So I hear you say," answered Miss Hardy, peering through the screen of

cedar sprays, her eyes shining a little wickedly from their shadows.

"You have a hard time of it with me, haven't you, dear? By the way,

Clara, who prompted you to this lecture--Hen?"

"No, Hen did not; neither he nor Alec seem to have eyes or ears for

anything but deer and caribou; they are constantly airing their

new-found knowledge of the country. I had to beg Alec to come to sleep

last night, or I believe they would have gossiped until morning. The one

redeeming point in your Genesee Jack is that he doesn't talk."

"He isn't my Genesee Jack," returned the girl; "but he does talk, and

talk well, I think. You do not know him, that is all, and you never

will, with those starchy manners of yours. Not talk!--why, he has taught

me a lot of Chinook, and told me all about a miner's life and a

hunter's. Not talk!--I've only known him a little over a week, and he

has told me his life for ten years back."

"Yes, with no little encouragement from you, I'll wager."

"Well, my bump of curiosity was enlarged somewhat as to his life,"

acknowledged the girl. "You see he has such an unusual personality,

unusually interesting, I mean. I never knew any man like him in the

East. Why, he only needs a helmet instead of the sombrero, and armor

instead of the hunting suit, and he would make an ideal Launcelot."

"Good gracious, Rache! do stop raving over the man, or I shall certainly

have Hen discharge him and take you back to civilization at once."

"But perhaps I won't go back--what then; and perhaps Hen could not be

able to see your reason for getting rid of a good guide," said the girl

coolly, knowing she had the upper hand of the controversy; "and as to

the raving, you know I never said a word about him until you began to

find fault with everything, from the cut of his clothes to the name he

gives, and then--well, a fellow must stand up for his friends, you

know."

"Of course a fellow must," agreed someone back of them, and the young

ranchman from the East came down under the branches from the camp-fire

just kindled; "that is a manly decision, Rache, and does you credit. But

what's the argument?"

"Oh, Clara thinks I am taking root too quickly in the soil of loose

customs out here," explained the girl, covering the question, yet

telling nothing.

"She doesn't approve of our savage mode of life, does she?" he queried,

sympathetically; "and she hasn't seen but a suggestion of its horrors

yet. Too bad Jim Kale did not come; she could have made the acquaintance

of a specimen that would no doubt be of interest to her--a squaw man

with all his native charms intact."

"Hen," said the girl, rising on her elbow, "I wish you would tell me

just what you mean by a 'squaw man'; is it a man who buys squaws, or

sells them, or eats them, or--well, what does he do?"

"He marries them--sometimes," was the laconic reply, as if willing to

drop the question. But Miss Rache, when interested, was not to be thrust

aside until satisfied.

"Is that all?" she persisted; "is he a sort of Mormon, then--an Indian

Mormon? And how many do they marry?"

"I never knew them to marry more than one," hazarded Mr. Hardy. "But, to

tell the truth, I know very little about their customs; I understand

they are generally a worthless class of men, and the term 'squaw man' is

a stigma, in a way--the most of them are rather ashamed of it, I

believe."

"I don't see why," began Rache.

"No, I don't suppose you do," broke in her cousin Hardy with a

relative's freedom, "and it is not necessary that you should; just

confine your curiosity to other phases of Missoula County that are open

for inspection, and drop the squaw men."

"I haven't picked up any of them yet," returned the girl, rising to her

feet, "but I will the first chance I get; and I give you fair warning,

you might as well tell me all I want to know, for I will find out."

"I'll wager she will," sighed Clara, as the girl walked away to where

their traps and sachels were stacked under a birch tree, and while she

turned things topsy-turvy looking for something, she nodded her head

sagaciously over her shoulder at the two left behind; "to be sure she

will--she is one of the girls who are always stumbling on just the sort

of knowledge that should be kept from them; and this question of your

horrid social system out here--well, she will know all about it if she

has to interview Ivans or your guide to find out; and I suppose it is an

altogether objectionable topic?"

The intonation of the last words showed quite as much curiosity as the

girl had declared, only it was more carefully veiled.

"Oh, I don't know as it is," returned her brother; "except

under--well--circumstances. But, some way, a white man is mightily

ashamed to have it known that he has a squaw wife. Ivans told me that

many of them would as soon be shot as to have it known back East where

they came from."

"Yes," remarked a gentleman who joined them during this speech, and

whose brand-new hunting suit bespoke the "got-up-regardless" tourist;

"it is strange, don't you think so? Why, back East we would hear of such

a marriage and think it most romantic; but out here--well, it seems hard

to convince a Westerner that there is any romance about an Indian."

"And I don't wonder, Alec, do you?" asked Mrs. Houghton, turning to her

husband as if sure of sympathy from him; "all the squaws we have seen

are horribly slouchy, dirty creatures. I have yet to see the Indian

maiden of romance."

"In their original state they may have possessed all the picturesque

dignities and chivalrous character ascribed to them," answered Mr.

Houghton, doubtfully; "but if so, their contact with the white race has

caused a vast degeneration."

"Which it undoubtedly has," returned Hardy, decidedly. "Mixing of races

always has that effect, and in the Indian country it takes a most

decided turn. The Siwash or Indian men of this territory may be a

thieving, whisky-drinking lot, but the chances are that nine-tenths of

the white men who marry among them become more worthless and degraded

than the Indian."

"There are, I suppose, exceptions," remarked Houghton.

"Well, there may be," answered Hardy, "but they are not taken into

consideration, and that is why a man dislikes to be classed among them.

There is something of the same feeling about it that there is back home

about a white man marrying a negro."

"Then why do they do it, if they are ashamed of it?" queried Mrs.

Houghton with logical directness.

"Well, I suppose because there are no white women here for them to

marry," answered her brother, "and Indians or half-breeds are always to

be found."

"If ministers are not," added Houghton.

"Exactly!"

"Oh, good gracious!" ejaculated the little matron in a tone of disgust;

"no wonder they are ashamed--even the would-be honest ones are likely to

incur suspicion, because, as you say, the exceptions are too few for

consideration. A truly delightful spot you have chosen; the moral

atmosphere would be a good field for a missionary, I should say--yet you

would come here."

"Yes, and I am going to stay, too," said Hardy, in answer to this

sisterly tirade. "We see or know but little of those poor devils or

their useless lives--only we know by hearing that such a state of things

exists. But as for quitting the country because of that--well, no, I

could not be bought back to the East after knowing this glorious

climate. Why, Tillie and I have picked out a tree to be buried under--a

magnificent fellow that grows on the plateau above our house--just high

enough to view the Four-mile Park from. She is as much in love with the

freedom of these hills as I am."

"Poor child!" said his sister, commiseratingly; "to think of her being

exiled in that park, twenty miles from a white woman!--didn't you say it

was twenty?"

"Yes," and her brother leaned his back against the tree and smiled down

at her; "it's twenty and a half, and the white woman whom you see at the

end of the trip keeps a tavern--runs it herself, and sells the whisky

that crosses the bar with an insinuating manner that is all her own.

I've heard that she can sling an ugly fist in a scrimmage. She is a

great favorite with the boys; the pet name they have for her is Holland

Jin."

"Ugh! Horrible! And she--she allows them to call her so?"

"Certainly; you see it is a trade-mark for the house; her real name is

Jane Holland."

"Holland Jin!" repeated his sister with a shudder. "Tillie, come here!

Have you heard this? Hen has been telling me of your neighbor, Holland

Jin. How do you expect to live always in this out-of-the-way place?"

Out from under the branches where their camp had just been located came

Tillie, a charmingly plain little wife of less than a year--just her

childishly curved red lips and her soft dark eyes to give attractiveness

to her tanned face.

"Yes, I have heard of her," she said in a slow, half-shy way; "she can't

be very--very--nice; but one of the stockmen said she was good-hearted

if anyone was sick or needed help, so she can't be quite bad."

"You dear little soul," said her sister-in-law fondly; "you would have a

good word to say for anyone; but you must allow it will be awfully

dismal out here without any lady friends."

"You are here, and Rache."

"Yes, but when Rache and I have gone back to civilization?"

The dark eyes glanced at the speaker and then at the tall young

ranchman. "Hen will be here always."

"Oh, you insinuating little Quaker!" laughed the older woman; "one would

think you were married yesterday and the honeymoon only begun, would you

not, Alec? I wonder if these Chinook winds have a tendency to softening

of the brain--have they, Hen? If so, you and Tillie are in a dangerous

country. What was it you shot this time, Alec--a pole-cat or a

flying-squirrel? Yes, I'll go and see for myself."

And she followed her husband across the open space of the plateau to

where Ivans was cutting slices of venison from the latest addition to

their larder; while Hardy stood smiling down, half amusedly, at the

flushed face of the little wife.

"Are you afraid of softening of the brain?" he asked in a tone of

concern. She shook her head, but did not look up. She was easily teased,

as much so about her husband as if he was still a wooer. And to have

shown her fondness in his sister's eyes! What sister could ever yet see

the reason for a sister-in-law's blind adoration?

"Are you going to look on yourself as a martyr after the rest have left

you here in solitary confinement with me as a jailer?"

Another shake of the head, and the drooped eyes were raised for one

swift glance.

"Because I was thinking," continued her tormentor--"I was thinking that

if the exile, as Clara calls it, would be too severe on you, I might, if

it was for your own good--I might send you back with the rest to

Kentucky."

Then there was a raising of the head quick enough and a tempestuous

flight across the space that separated them, and a flood of

remonstrances that ended in happy laughter, a close clasp of arms,

and--yes, in spite of the girl who was standing not very far away--a

kiss; and Hardy circled his wife's shoulders with his long arms, and,

with a glance of laughing defiance at his cousin, drew her closer and

followed in the wake of the Houghtons.

The girl had deliberately stood watching that little scene with a

curious smile in her eyes, a semi-cynical gaze at the lingering fondness

of voice and touch. There was no envy in her face, only a sort of

good-natured disbelief. Her cousin Clara always averred that Rachel was

too masculine in spirit to ever understand the little tendernesses that

burnish other women's lives.

CHAPTER IV.

BANKED FIRES.

She did not look masculine, however, as she stood there, slender, and

brown from the tan of the winds; the unruly, fluffy hair clustering

around a face and caressing a neck that was essentially womanly in every

curve; only, slight as the form seemed, one could find strong points in

the depth of chest and solid look of the shoulders; a veteran of the

roads would say those same points in a bit of horse-flesh would denote

capacity for endurance, and, added to the strong-looking hand and the

mockery latent in the level eyes, they completed a personality that she

had all her life heard called queer. And with a smile that reflected

that term, she watched those two married lovers stroll arm in arm to

where the freshly-killed deer lay. Glancing at the group, she missed the

face of their guide, a face she had seen much of since that sunrise in

the Kootenai. Across the sward a little way the horses were picketed,

and Mowitza's graceful head was bent in search for the most luscious

clusters of the bunch-grass; but Mowitza's master was not to be seen.

She had heard him speak, the night before, of signs of grizzlies around

the shank of the mountain, and wondered if he had started on a lone hunt

for them. She was conscious of a half-resentful feeling that he had not

given her a chance of going along, when he knew she wanted to see

everything possible in this out-of-door life in the hills.

So, in some ill-humor, she walked aimlessly across the grass where

Clara's lecture on the conventionalities had been delivered; and pushing

ahead under the close-knit boughs, she was walking away from the rest,

led by that spirit of exploration that comes naturally to one in a

wilderness, and parting a wide-spreading clump of laurel, was about to

wedge her way through it, when directly on the other side of that green

wall she saw Genesee, whom she had supposed was alone after a grizzly.

Was he asleep? He was lying face downward under the woven green roof

that makes twilight in the cedars. The girl stopped, about to retrace

her steps quietly, when a sudden thought made her look at him more

closely, with a devout prayer in her heart that he was asleep, and

asleep soundly; for her quick eyes had measured the short distance

between that resting-place and the scene of the conversation of a few

minutes ago. She tried wildly to remember what Clara had said about him,

and, most of all, what answers Clara had received. She had no doubt said

things altogether idiotic, just from a spirit of controversy, and here

the man had been within a few feet of them all the time! She felt like

saying something desperately, expressively masculine; but instead of

easing her feelings in that manner, she was forced to complete silence

and a stealthy retreat.

Was he asleep, or only resting? The uncertainty was aggravating. And a

veritable Psyche, she could not resist the temptation of taking a last,

sharp look. She leaned forward ever so little to ascertain, and thus

lost her chance of retreating unseen; for among the low-hanging branches

was one on which there were no needles of green--a bare, straggling limb

with twigs like the fingers of black skeletons. In bending forward, she

felt one of them fasten itself in her hair; tugging blindly and wildly,

at last she loosened their impish clutches, and left as trophy to the

tree some erratic, light-brown hair and--she gave up in despair as she

saw it--her cap, that swung backward and forward, just out of reach.

If it only staid there for the present, she would not care so much; but

it was so tantalizingly insecure, hanging by a mere thread, and almost

directly above the man. Fascinated by the uncertainty, she stood still.

Would it stay where it was? Would it fall?

The silent query was soon answered--it fell, dropped lightly down on the

man's shoulder, and he, raising his head from the folded arms, showed a

face from which the girl took a step back in astonishment. He had not

been asleep, then; but to the girl's eyes he looked like a man who had

been either fighting or weeping. She had never seen a face so changed,

telling so surely of some war of the emotions. He lay in the shadow, one

hand involuntarily lifting itself as a shade for his eyes while he

looked up at her.

"Well!" The tone was gruff, almost hoarse; it was as unlike him as his

face at that moment, and Rachel Hardy wondered, blankly, if he was

drunk--it was about the only reasonable explanation she could give

herself. But even with that she could not be satisfied; there was too

much quick anger at the thought--not anger alone, but a decided feeling

of disappointment in the man. To be sure, she had been influenced by no

one to have faith in him; still--someway--

"Are you--are you ill, Mr. Genesee?" she asked at last.

"Not that I know of."

What a bear the man was! she thought; what need was there to answer a

civil question in that tone. It made her just antagonistic enough not to

care so much if his feelings had been hurt by Clara's remarks, and she

asked bluntly:

"Have you been here long?"

"Some time."

"Awake?"

"Well, yes," and he made a queer sound in his throat, half grunt, half

laugh; "I reckon I--was--awake."

The slow, half-bitter words impelled her to continue:

"Then you--you heard the--the conversation over there?"

He looked at her, and she thought his eyes were pretty steady for a

drunken man's.

"Well, yes," he repeated, "I reckon--I--heard it."

All her temper blazed up at the deliberate confession. If he had seemed

embarrassed or wounded, she would have felt sorry; but this stoicism

angered her, as the idea of drunkenness had done--perhaps because each

set herself and her feelings aside--I do not know, but that may have

been the reason; she was a woman.

"And you deliberately lay there and listened," she burst out wrathfully,

"and let us say all sorts of things, no doubt, when it was your place as

a gentleman to let us know you were here? I--I would not have taken you

for an eavesdropper, Mr. Jack Genesee!" And with this tirade she turned

to make her way back through the laurel.

"Here!"

She obeyed the command in his voice, thinking, as she did so, how quick

the man was to get on his feet. In a stride he was beside her, his hand

outstretched to stop her; but it was not necessary, his tone had done

that, and he thrust both hands into the pockets of his hunting coat.

"Stop just where you are for a minute, Miss," he said, looking down at

her; "and don't be so infernally quick about making a judge and jury of

yourself--and you look just now as if you'd like to be sheriff, too. I

make no pretense of being a gentleman of culture, so you can save

yourself the trouble of telling me the duty of one. What little polish I

ever had has been knocked off in ten years of hill life out here. I'm

not used to talking to ladies, and my ways may seem mighty rough to you;

but I want you to know I wasn't listening--I would have got away if I

could, but I--was paralyzed."

"What?" Her tone was coldly unbelieving.

His manner was collected enough now. He was talking soberly, if rather

brusquely; but--that strange look in his face at first? and the eyes

that burned as if for the lack of tears?--those were things not yet

understood.

"Yes," he continued, "that's what I was, I reckon. I heard what she

said; she is right, too, when she says I'm no fit company for a lady. I

hadn't thought of it before, and it started me to thinking--thinking

fast--and I just lay still there and forgot everything only those words;

and then I heard the things you said--mighty kind they were, too, but I

wasn't thinking of them much--only trying to see myself as people of

your sort would see me if they knew me as I do, and I concluded I would

pan out pretty small; then I heard something else that was good for me,

but bitter to take. And then--" His voice grew uncertain; he was not

looking at the girl, but straight ahead of him, his features softened,

his eyes half closed at some memory.

"And then what, Genesee?" She felt a little sorry for him as he was

speaking--a little kinder since he had owned his own unworthiness. A

touch of remorse even led her to lay a couple of fingers on the sleeve

of his coat, to remind him of her presence as she repeated: "And then?"

He glanced down at the fingers--the glance made the hand drop to her

side very quickly--and then he coolly brushed his sleeve carefully with

the other hand.

"Then for a little bit I was let get a glimpse of what heaven on earth

might mean to a man, if he hadn't locked the door against himself and

dropped into hell instead. This is a blind trail I'm leading on, is it,

Miss?--all tsolo. Well, it doesn't matter; you would have to drop into

a pretty deep gulch yourself before you could understand, and you'll

never do that--the Almighty forbid!" he added, energetically. "You

belong to the mountains and the high places, and you're too sure-footed

not to stay there. You can go now. I only stopped you to say that my

listening mightn't have been in as mean a spirit as you judged. Judging

things you don't understand is bad business anyway--let it alone."

With that admonition he turned away, striding through the laurel growth

and spruce, and on down the mountain, leaving Miss Hardy feeling more

lectured and astonished than she had often been in her life.

"Well, upon my word!"

It is not an original exclamation--she was not equal to any original

thought just then; but for some time after his disappearance that was

all she could find to say, and she said it standing still there,

bare-headed and puzzled; then, gathering up her faculties and her

skirts, she made her way back through the low growth, and sat down where

Clara and herself had sat only a little while before.

"And Clara says he doesn't talk!" she soliloquized, with a faint smile

about her lips. "Not talk!--he did not give me a chance to say a word,

even if I had wanted to. I feel decidedly 'sat upon,' as Hen would say,

and I suppose I deserved it."

Then she missed her cap, and went to look for it; but it was gone. She

remembered seeing it in his hand; he must have forgotten and taken it

with him. Then she sat down again, and all the time his words, and the

way he had said them, kept ringing in her head--"Judging things you

don't understand is bad business."

Of course he was right; but it seemed strange for her to be taken to

task by a man like that on such a subject--an uncouth miner and hunter

in the Indian hills. But was he quite uncouth? While he made her stop

and listen, his earnestness had overleaped that slurred manner of speech

that belongs to the ignorant of culture. His words had been clearer cut.

There had been the ring of finished steel in his voice, not the thud of

iron in the ore, and it had cut clear a path of revelations. The man,

then, could do more than ride magnificently, and look a Launcelot in

buckskin--he could think--how deeply and wildly had been shown by the

haggard face she had seen. But the cause of it? Even his disjointed

explanation had given her no clue.

"Tsolo," she thought, repeating the Chinook word he had used; "that

means to lose one's way--to wander in the dark. Well, he was right. That

is what I am doing"; and then she laughed half mockingly at herself as

she added: "And Mr. Jack Genesee has started me on the path--and started

me bare-headed. Oh, dear, what a muddle! I wonder where my cap is, and I

wonder where the man went to, and I wonder--I wonder what he meant by a

glimpse of heaven. I haven't seen any signs of it."

But she had seen it--seen it and laughed mockingly, unbelievingly, while

the man had by the sight been touched into a great heart-ache of

desolation. And yet it was a commonplace thing they had seen; only two

lives bound together by the wish of their hearts and a wedding ring--an

affection so honest that its fondness could be frankly shown to the

world.

* * * * *

That evening Genesee came back to camp looking tired, and told Ivans

there was a grizzly waiting to be skinned in a gully not far off. He had

had a hard tussle after it and was too tired to see to the pelt; and

then he turned to Miss Hardy and drew her cap from his pocket.

"I picked it up back there in the brush, and forgot to give it to you

before going out," he said.

That was all--no look or manner that showed any remembrance of their

conversation. And for the next two days the girl saw very little of

their guide; no more long gallops ahead of the party. Mr. Genesee had

taken a sedate turn, and remained close to the rest, and if any of the

ladies received more of his attention than another it was Mrs. Hardy.

He had for her something approaching veneration. In her tender, half-shy

love of her husband she seemed to him as the Madonna to those of the

Roman church--a symbol of something holy--of a purity of affection

unknown to the rough man of the hills. Unpretentious little Tillie would

have been amazed if she had suspected the pedestal she occupied in the

imagination of this dark-faced fellow, whose only affection seemed to be

lavished on Mowitza. Clara always looked at him somewhat askance; and in

passing a party of the Indians who were berry-hunting in the mountains,

she noted suspiciously his ready speech in their own language, and the

decided deference paid him by them; the stolid stare of the squaws

filled her with forebodings of covetousness for her raiment--of which

several of them rather stood in need, though the weather was warm--and

that night was passed by her in waking dreams of an Indian massacre,

with their guide as a leader of the enemy.

"Do you know them very well?" asked Miss Hardy, riding up to Genesee.

"Is it entirely Chinook they are talking? Let me try my knowledge of it.

I should like to speak to them in their jargon. Can I?"

"You can try. Here's a Siwash, a friend of mine, who is as near a Boston

(American) man as any of them--try him."

And, under Genesee's tuition, she asked several questions about the

berry yield in the hills, and the distance to markets where pelts could

be sold; and the Indian answered briefly, expressing distance as much by

the sweep of his hand toward the west as by the adjective

"siah-si-ah;" and Miss Hardy, well satisfied with her knowledge, would

have liked to add to her possessions the necklace of bear's claws that

adorned the bronze throat of the gentleman who answered her questions.

The squaws slouched around the camp, curious and dirty, here and there a

half-breed showing the paler blood through olive skin. The younger women

or girls were a shade less repulsive than their mothers, but none showed

material for a romance of Indian life. They were as spiritless as

ill-kept cattle.

Back of some tethered ponies Miss Hardy noticed a dark form dodging as

if to avoid being seen. A squaw possessed of shyness was such a direct

contradiction of those she had seen, that the white girl found herself

watching the Indian one with a sort of curiosity--in fact, she rode her

horse over in the direction of the ponies, thinking the form she had a

glimpse of was only a child; but it was not, for back of the ponies it

lay flat to the ground as a snake, only the head raised, the eyes

meeting those of Miss Hardy with a half scowl, and the bright-beaded

dress outlining the form of a girl perhaps twenty years old, and dressed

much neater than any she had seen in the camp. By the light tinge of

color she was evidently a half-breed, and the white girl was about to

turn her horse's head, when, with a low exclamation, the other seized a

blanket that had slipped from a pony, and quick as a flash had rolled

her plump form in it, head and heels, and dropped like one asleep, face

downward, in the trampled grass.

Wondering at the sudden hiding and its cause, Miss Hardy turned away and

met Genesee, who was riding toward her.

"Shaky-looking stock," he commented, supposing she was looking at the

ponies. "The rest are going on, Miss; we have to do some traveling to

reach our last camp by night-fall."

As they rode away, Miss Hardy turned for a last look at that

mummy-looking form by the ponies. It apparently had not moved. She

wondered if it was Genesee the girl was hiding from, and if so, why? Was

their guide one of those heroes of the border whose face is a thing of

terror to Indian foe? And was the half-breed girl one of the few timid

ones? She could not answer her own questions, and something kept her

from speaking to Genesee of it; in fact, she did not speak to him of

anything with the same freedom since that conversation by the laurel

bushes.

Sometimes she would laugh a little to herself as she thought of how he

had brushed off that coat-sleeve; it had angered her, amused her, and

puzzled her. That entire scene seemed a perplexing, unreal sort of an

affair to her sometimes, especially when looking at their guide as he

went about the commonplace duties in the camp or on the trail. An

undemonstrative, prosaic individual she knew he appeared to the rest;

laconic and decided when he did speak, but not a cheery companion. To

her always, after that day, he was a suggestion of a crater in which the

fires were banked.

CHAPTER V.

AT LAST CAMP.

After their stop at the Indian camp, which Genesee explained was a

berrying crowd from the Kootenai tribe, there was, of course, comment

among the visitors as to the mixed specimens of humanity they had seen

there.

"I don't wonder a white man is ashamed of an Indian wife," said Mrs.

Houghton. "What slouchy creatures!"

"All the more reason for a white man to act the part of missionary, and

marry them," remarked Rachel Hardy, "and teach them what the domestic

life of a woman should be."

Genesee turned square around to look at the speaker--perhaps she did not

strike him as being a domestic woman herself. Whatever the cause of that

quick attention, she noticed it, and added: "Well, Mr. Genesee, don't

you think so? You must have seen considerable of that sort of life."

"I have--some," he answered concisely, but showing no disposition to

discuss it, while Mrs. Houghton was making vain efforts to engage Miss

Hardy's attention by the splendid spread of the country below them; but

it was ineffectual.

"Yes, Clara, I see the levels along that river--I've been seeing them

for the past two hours--but just now I am studying the social system of

those hills"; and then she turned again to their guide. "You did not

answer my question, Mr. Genesee," she said, ignoring Mrs. Houghton's

admonishing glances. "Do you not agree with my idea of marriages between

whites and Indians?"

"No!" he said bluntly; "most of the white men I know among the Indians

need themselves to be taught how people should live; they need white

women to teach them. It's uphill work showing an Indian how to live

decently when a man has forgotten how himself. Missionary work! Squaw

men are about as fit for that as--as hell's fit for a powder-house."

And under this emphatic statement and the shocked expression of Clara's

face, Miss Hardy collapsed, with the conviction that there must be

lights and shades of life in the Indian country that were not apparent

to the casual visitor. She wondered sometimes that Genesee had lived

there so long with no family ties, and she seldom heard him speak of any

white friend in Montana--only of old Davy MacDougall sometimes. Most of

his friends had Indian names. Altogether, it seemed a purposeless sort

of existence.

"Do you expect to live your life out here, like this?" she asked him

once. "Don't you ever expect to go back home?"

"Hardly! There is nothing to take me back now."

"And only a horse and a gun to keep you here?" she smiled.

"N--no; something besides, Miss. I've got a right smart of a ranch on

the other side of the Maple range. It's running wild--no stock on it;

but in Tamahnous Hill there's a hole I've been digging at for the past

four years. MacDougall reckons I'm 'witched' by it, but it may pan out

all right some of these days."

"Gold hunting?"

"No, Miss, silver; and it's there. I've got tired more than once and

given it the klatawa (the go-by); but I'd always come back, and I

reckon I always will until I strike it."

"And then?"

"Well, I haven't got that far yet."

And thus any curiosity about the man's life or future was generally

silenced. He had told her many things of the past; his life in the mines

of Colorado and Idaho, with now and then the diversion of a government

scout's work along the border. All of that he would speak of without

reserve, but of the actual present or of the future he would say

nothing.

"I have read somewhere in a book of a man without a past," remarked the

girl to Mrs. Hardy; "but our guide seems a man utterly without a

future."

"Perhaps he does not like to think of it here alone," suggested Tillie

thoughtfully; "he must be very lonely sometimes. Just see how he loves

that horse!"

"Not a horse, Tillie--a klootchman kiuatan," corrected the student of

Chinook; "If you are going to live out here, you must learn the language

of the hills."

"You are likely to know it first;" and then, after a little, she added:

"But noticing that man's love for his Mowitza, I have often thought how

kind he would be to a wife. I think he has a naturally affectionate

nature, though he does swear--I heard him; and to grow old and wild here

among the Indians and squaw men seems too bad. He is intelligent--a man

who might accomplish a great deal yet. You know he is comparatively

young--thirty-five, I heard Hen say."

"Yes," said Mrs. Houghton sarcastically; "a good age at which to adopt a

child. You had better take him back as one of the fixtures on the ranch,

Tillie; of course he may need some training in the little courtesies of

life, but no doubt Rachel would postpone her return East and offer her

services as tutor;" and with this statement Mistress Houghton showed her

disgust of the entire subject.

"She is 'riled,'" said the girl, looking quizzically after the plump

retreating form.

"Why, what in the world--"

"Nothing in the world, Tillie, and that's what's the matter with Clara.

Her ideas of the world are, and always will be, bounded by the rules and

regulations of Willow Centre, Kentucky. Of course it isn't to be found

on a map of the United States, but it's a big place to Clara; and she

doesn't approve of Mr. Genesee because he lives outside its knowledge.

She intimated yesterday that he might be a horse-thief for any actual

acquaintance we had with his resources or manner of living."

"Ridiculous!" laughed Tillie. "That man!"

The girl slipped her arm around the little wife's waist and gave her a

hug like a young bear. She had been in a way lectured and snubbed by

that man, but she bore no malice.

The end of their cultus corrie was reached as they went into camp for

a two-days' stay, on the shoulder of a mountain from which one could

look over into the Idaho hills, north into British Columbia, and through

the fair Kootenai valleys to the east, where the home-ranch lay.

Houghton and Hardy each had killed enough big game to become inoculated

with the taste for wild life, and the ladies were delighted with the

idea of having the spoils of the hunt for the adornment of their homes;

and altogether the trip was voted a big success.

Is there anything more appetizing, after a long ride through the

mountains, than to rest under the cedars at sunset and hear the sizzle

of broiled meat on the red coals, and have the aroma of coffee borne to

you on the breeze that would lull you to sleep if you were not so

hungry?

"I could have eaten five meals during every twenty-four hours since we

started," acknowledged Rachel, as she watched with flattering attention

the crisping slices of venison that were accumulating on a platter by

the fire.

And she looked as if both the appetite and the wild living had agreed

with her. Clara complained that Rachel really seemed to pride herself on

the amount of tan she had been able to gather from the wind and the sun,

while Hardy decided that only her light hair would keep her from being

taken for an Indian.

But for all the looks that were gaining a tinge of wildness, and the

appetites that would persist in growing ravenous, it was none the less a

jolly, pleasant circle that gathered about the evening meal, sometimes

eaten on a large flat stone, if any were handy, and again on the grass,

where the knives and small articles of table-ware would lose themselves

in the tall spears; but, whatever was used as a table, the meal in the

evening was the domestic event of the day. At midday there was often but

a hasty lunch; breakfast was simply a preparation for travel; but in the

evening all were prepared for rest and the enjoyment of either eatables

or society. And until the darkness fell there was the review of the

day's hunt by the men--Hardy and Houghton vying with each other in their

recitals--or, as Ivans expressed it, "swappin' lies"--around the fire.

Sometimes there would be singing, and blended with the notes of

night-birds in the forest would sound the call of human throats echoing

upward in old hymns that all had known sometime, in the East. And again

Tillie would sing them a ballad or a love-song in a sweet, fresh voice;

or, with Clara, Hardy, and Houghton, a quartette would add volume to

some favorite, their scout a silent listener. Rachel never sang with the

rest; she preferred whistling, herself. And many a time when out of

sight of her on the trail, she was located by that boyish habit she had

of echoing the songs of many of the birds that were new to her, learning

their notes, and imitating them so well as to bring many a decoyed

answer from the woods.

Between herself and the guide there was no more their former

comaraderie. They had never regained their old easy, friendly manner.

Still, she asked him that night at "last camp" of the music of the

Indians. Had they any? Could he sing? Had there ever been any of their

music published? etc.

And he told them of the airs that were more like chants, like the echoes

of whispering or moaning forests, set to human words; of the dusky

throats that, without training, yet sang together with never a discord;

of the love-songs that had in them the minor cadences of sadness. Only

their war-songs seemed to carry brightness, and they only when echoes of

victory.

In the low, glowing light of the fire, when the group around it faded in

the darkness, he seemed to forget his many listeners, and talked on as

if to only one. To the rest it was as if they had met a stranger there

that evening for the first time, and found him entertaining. Even Mrs.

Houghton dropped her slightly supercilious manner toward him, a change

to which he was as indifferent as to her coolness. It may have been

Tillie's home-songs in the evening that unlocked his lips; or it may

have been the realization that the pleasure-trip was ended--that in a

short time he would know these people no more, who had brought him

home-memories in their talk of home-lives. It may have been a dash of

recklessness that urged him to enjoy it for a little only--this

association that suggested so much to which he had long been a stranger.

Whatever the impulse was, it showed a side of his nature that only

Rachel had gained any knowledge of through those first bright, eager

days of their cultus corrie.

At Tillie's request he repeated some remembered fragments of Indian

songs that had been translated into the Red's language, and of which he

gave them the English version or meaning as well as he could. A couple

of them he knew entire, and to Tillie's delight he hummed the plaintive

airs until she caught the notes. And even after the rest had quietly

withdrawn and rolled themselves in blankets for the night's rest, Hardy

and his wife and Genesee still sat there with old legends of Tsiatko,

the demon of the night, for company, and with strange songs in which the

music would yet sound familiar to any ears used to the shrilling of the

winds through the timber, or the muffled moans of the wood-dove.

And in the sweet dusk of the night, Rachel, the first to leave the fire,

lay among the odorous, spicy branches of the cedar and watched the

picture of the group about the fire. All was in darkness, save when a

bit of reflected red would outline form or feature, and they looked

rather uncanny in the red-and-black coloring. An Indian council or the

grouping of witches and warlocks it might have been, had one judged the

scene only from sight. But the voices of the final three, dropped low

though they were for the sake of the supposed sleepers, yet had a tone

of pleasant converse that belied their impish appearance.

Those voices came to Rachel dreamily, merging their music with the

drowsy odors of a spruce pillow. And through them all she heard Tillie

and Genesee singing a song of some unlettered Indian poet:

"Lemolo mika tsolo siah polaklie,

Towagh tsee chil-chil siah saghallie.

Mika na chakko?--me sika chil-chil,

Opitsah! mika winapia,

Tsolo--tsolo!"

"Wild do I wander, far in the darkness,

Shines bright a sweet star far up above.

Will you not come to me? you are the star,

Sweetheart! I wait,

Lost!--in the dark!"

And the white girl's mouth curled dubiously in that smile that always

vanquished the tender curves of her lips, and then dropped asleep

whispering the refrain, "Tsolo--tsolo!"

CHAPTER VI.

TSOLO--TSOLO!

The retracing of steps, either figuratively or literally, is always

provocative of thought to the individual who walks again over the old

paths; the waning of a moon never finds the same state of feelings in

the heart that had throbbed through it under the gold sickle. Back over

how many a road do we walk with a sigh, remembering the laughter that

had once echoed along it! Something has been gained, something has been

lost, since; and a human sigh is as likely to be called forth by one

cause as the other.

Miss Rachel Hardy, who usually laughed at sighs of sentiment, did not

indulge in them as one by one the landmarks of the past three weeks rose

in sight. But different natures find different vents for feeling, and

she may have got rid of hers by the long gallops she took alone over the

now known trail, priding herself on her ability to find her way miles

ahead of the slower-moving party; and resting herself and horse in some

remembered retreat, would await their coming.

Through these solitary rides she began to understand the fascination

such a free, untrammeled existence would have for a man. One must feel a

very Adam in the midst of this virginity of soil and life of the hills.

She had not Tillie's domestic ideas of life, else the thought of an Eve

might also have occurred to her. But though she wasted no breath in

sighs over the retraced cultus corrie, neither did she in the mockery

that had tantalized Clara in the beginning. That lady did not find her

self-imposed duty of chaperon nearly so arduous as at first, since, from

the time the other ladies awakened to the fact that their guide had a

good baritone voice and could be interesting, the girl forgot her role

of champion, also her study of mongrel languages; for she dropped that

ready use of Chinook of which she had been proud, especially in her

conversation with him, and only used it if chance threw her in the way

of Indians hunting or gathering olallie (berries) in the hills.

Genesee never noticed by word or action the changed manner that dropped

him out of her knowledge. Once or twice, in crossing a bit of country

that was in any way dangerous to a stranger, he had said no one must

leave the party or go out of hearing distance; and though the order was

a general one, they all knew he meant Rachel, and the ladies wondered a

little if that generally headstrong damsel would heed it, or if she

would want willfully to take the bit in her teeth and go as she

pleased--a habit of hers; but she did not; she rode demurely with the

rest, showing the respect of a soldier to the orders of a commander.

Along the last bit of bad country he spoke to her of the enforced care

through the jungle of underbrush, where the chetwoot (black bear) was

likely to be met and prove a dangerous enemy, at places where the trail

led along the edge of ravines, and where a fright to a horse was a risky

thing.

"It's hard on you, Miss, to be kept back here with the rest of us," he

said, half apologetically; "you're too used to riding free for this to

be any pleasure, but--"

"Don't distress yourself about me," she answered easily, but without

looking at him. "I have felt a little lazy to-day, so has Betty, and

have been satisfied to loaf; but now we are at the edge of this bad

strip, and just down over this bend ahead is a long stretch of level,

and I think--yes, I am quite sure--I am ready now for a run."

And without waiting to hear either assent or dissent to her intention,

she touched Betty with the whip, and Mowitza and her master were left

behind, much to Mowitza's dissatisfaction. She gave one plunge ahead as

if to follow, but Genesee's hand on the bridle had a quick, cruel grip

for a moment, and in slow silence they made their way down the timbered

slope to the lower levels. The girl, free from companionship save her

own thoughts, galloped through the odorous, shadowy table-lands,

catching here and there a glimpse of glistening water in a river ahead,

as it trailed its length far below the plateaus, and shone like linked

diamonds away toward the east.

She remembered the river; it was a branch of the Kootenai. To be near it

meant but a short journey home; two days more, perhaps, and then--well,

their outing would be over. She would go back East, and say good-bye to

Betty; and then she began to think of that man who belonged to these

hills and who never need leave them--never need go a mile without his

horse, if he did not choose; and she envied him as she could not have

thought it possible to do six months before--to envy a man such a

primitive existence, such simple possessions! But most human wants are

so much a matter of association, and Rachel Hardy, though all

unconscious of it, was most impressionable to surroundings. Back of her

coolness and carelessness was a sensitive temperament in which the

pulses were never stilled. It thrilled her with quick sympathies for

which she was vexed with herself, and which she hid as well as she

could. She had more than likely never tried to analyze her emotions;

they were seldom satisfactory enough for her to grant them so much

patience; but had she done so, she would have found her desires molded

as much by association and sentiment as most other human nature of her

age.

Once or twice she looked back as she left the timber, but could see

nothing of the others, and Betty seemed to scent the trail home, and

long for the ranch and the white-coated flocks of the pastures, for she

struck out over the table-lands, where her hoofs fell so softly in the

grass that the wild things of the ground-homes and the birds that rest

on the warm earth scampered and flew from under the enemy's feet that

were shod with iron. A small herd of elk with uncouth heads and

monstrous antlers were startled from the shelter of a knoll around which

she cantered; for a moment the natives and the stranger gazed at each

other with equal interest, and then a great buck plunged away over the

rolling land to the south, and the others followed as if they had been

given a word of command.

The girl watched them out of sight, finding them, like the most of

Montana natives, strange and interesting--not only the natives, but the

very atmosphere of existence, with its tinges of wildness and coloring

of the earth; even the rising and setting of the sun had a distinct

character of its own, in the rarefied air of this land that seemed so

far off from all else in the world. For in the valley of the Kootenai,

where the light breaks over the mountains of the east and vanishes again

over the mountains of the west, it is hard at times to realize that its

glory is for any land but the mellow, sun-kissed "park" whose only gates

open to the south.

The late afternoon was coming on; only an hour or so of sun, and then

the long flush twilight.

Remembering the camping-spot they were making for, she gave Betty rein,

thinking to reach it and have a fire built on their arrival, and her

hard ride gave her a longing for the sight of the pack-mules with the

eatables.

Another of those ugly, jolting bits of scrub-timber had to be crossed

before the haven of rest was reached. Betty had almost picked her way

through it, when a huge black something came scrambling down through the

brush almost in front of them. The little mare shied in terror, and the

girl tried to make a circuit of the animal, which she could see was an

enormous black bear. It did not seem to notice her, but was rolling and

pitching downward as if on a trail--no doubt that of honey in a tree.

Managing Betty was not an easy matter, and it took all of the girl's

strength to do so until the black stranger passed, and then, on

loosening the bridle, the terrified beast gave a leap forward. There was

a crash, a growl from under her feet, and an answering one from the huge

beast that had just gone by them; she had been followed by two cubs that

had escaped Rachel's notice in the thick brush, as all her attention had

been given to the mother; but Betty's feet coming down on one of the

cubs had brought forth a call that the girl knew might mean a war of

extermination. With a sharp cut of the whip, Betty, wild from the

clawing thing at her feet, sprang forward over it with a snort of

terror, just as the mother with fierce growls broke through the brush.

[Illustration: At a sharp cut of the whip, Betty sprang forward]

Once clear of them, the little mare ran like mad through the rough trail

over which she had picked her way so carefully but a little before.

Stones and loose earth clattered down the gully, loosened by her flying

feet, and dashed ominously in the mountain stream far below. The girl

was almost torn from the saddle by the low branches of the trees under

which she was borne. In vain she tried to check or moderate the mare's

gait. She could do little but drop low on the saddle and hang there,

wondering if she should be able to keep her seat until they got clear of

the timber. The swish of some twigs across her eyes half blinded her,

and it seemed like an hour went by with Betty crashing through the

brush, guiding herself, and seeming to lose none of her fright. Her ears

were deaf to the girl's voice, and at last, stumbling in her headlong

run, her rider was thrown against a tree, knowing nothing after the

sickening jar, and seeing nothing of Betty, who, freed from her burden,

recovered her footing, and, triumphant, dashed away on a cultus

"coolie" (run) of her own.

When Rachel recovered her powers of reasoning, she felt too lazy, too

tired to use them. She ached all over from the force of the fall, and

though realizing that the sun was almost down, and that she was alone

there in the timber, all she felt like doing was to drag herself into a

more comfortable position and go to sleep; but real sleep did not come

easily--only a drowsy stupor, through which she realized she was hungry,

and wondered if the rest were eating supper by that time, and if they

had found Betty, and if--no, rather, when would they find her?

She had no doubt just yet that they would find her; she could half

imagine how carefully and quickly Mowitza would cover the ground after

they missed her. Of course there were other horses in the party, but

Mowitza was the only one she happened to think of. She did not know

where she was; the mare had struck into a new trail for herself, and had

dropped her rider on a timbered slope of one of the foot-hills, where

there were no remembered landmarks, and the closeness of night would

prevent her from seeking them.

Twice she roused herself and tried to walk, but she was dizzily sick

from the wild ride and the fall that had stunned her, and both times she

was compelled to drop back on her couch of grass. The stars began to

creep out in the clear, warm sky, and up through the timber the shadows

grew black, and it all seemed very peaceful and very lovely. She thought

she would not mind sleeping there if she only had a blanket, and--yes,

some hot coffee--for through the shadows of the lower hills the dew

falls quickly, and already the coolness made itself felt with a little

shiver. She searched her pocket for some matches--not a match, therefore

no fire.

A sound in the distance diverted her thoughts from disappointment, and

she strained her ears for a repetition of it. Surely it was a shot, but

too far off for any call of hers to answer it. She could do nothing but

listen and wait, and the waiting grew long, so long that she concluded

it could be no one on her trail--perhaps some of the Indians in the

hills. She would be glad to see even them, she thought, for all she met

had seemed kindly disposed.

Then she fell to wondering about that half-breed girl who had hid back

of the ponies; was it Genesee she was afraid of, and if so, why?

Suddenly a light gleamed through the woods above her; a bent figure was

coming down the hill carrying a torch, and back of it a horse was

following slowly.

"Genesee!" called a glad voice through the dusk. "Genesee!"

There was no word in answer; only the form straightened, and with the

torch held high above his head he plunged down through the trees,

straight as an arrow, in answer to her voice.

She had risen to her feet, but swayed unsteadily as she went to meet

him.

"I am so glad--it--is--you," she said, her hands outstretched as he came

close. And then that returning dizziness sent her staggering forward,

half on her knees and half in his arms, as he threw the torch from him

and caught her.

She did not faint, though the only thing she was still conscious of was

that she was held in strong arms, and held very closely, and the beat of

a heart that was not her own throbbed against her rather nerveless form.

He had not yet spoken a word, but his breath coming quickly, brokenly,

told of great exhaustion, or it may be excitement.

Opening her eyes, she looked up into the face that had a strange

expression in the red light from the torch--his eyes seemed searching

her own so curiously.

"I--I'm all right," she half smiled in answer to what she thought an

unspoken query, "only"--and a wave of forgetfulness crept over the

estrangement of the late days--and she added--"only--Hyas till nika"

(I am very tired).

Her eyes were half closed in the content of being found, and the safety

of his presence. She had not changed her position or noticed that he had

not spoken. His hat had fallen to the ground, and something almost

boyish was in the bend of his bared head and the softness of his

features as his face drooped low over her own. Death brings back the

curves of youth to aged faces sometimes--is it the only change that does

so?

She felt the hand on her shoulder trembling; was it with her weight--and

he so strong? A muttered sentence came to her ears, through which she

could only distinguish a word that in its suppressed force might belong

to either a curse or a prayer--an intense "Christ!"

That aroused her to a realization of what she had been too contented to

remember. She opened her eyes and raised her head from his arm, brushing

his lips with her hair as she did so.

"Were you so much alarmed?" she asked in a clearer, more matter-of-fact

way, as she propped herself up on his outstretched arm; "and did you

come alone to find me?"

He drew back from her with a long, indrawn breath, and reached for his

hat.

"Yes," he said.

It was the first time he had spoken to her, and he did so with his eyes

still on her face and that curious expression in them. He was half

kneeling, his body drawn back and away from her, but his eyes unchanging

in their steadiness. As the girl lay there full length on the mountain

grass, only her head raised and turned toward him, she might have been a

Lamia from their attitudes and his expression.

"It seemed long to wait," she continued, turning her eyes toward

Mowitza, who had quietly come near them; "but I was not afraid. I knew

you would find me. I would have walked back to meet you if the fall had

not made me so dizzy. I am decidedly wake kloshe" (no good); and she

smiled as she reached out her hand to him, and he helped her rise to her

feet. "I feel all jolted to pieces," she said, taking a few steps toward

a tree against which she leaned. "And even now that you have come, I

don't know how I am to get to camp."

"I will get you there," he answered briefly. "Did the mare throw you?"

"I am not sure what she did," answered the girl. "She fell, I think, and

I fell with her, and when I could see trees instead of stars she had

recovered and disappeared. Oh! Did you see the bear?"

"Yes, and shot her. She might have killed you when her temper was up

over that cub. How did it happen?"

Each of them was a little easier in speech than at first, and she told

him as well as she could of the episode, and her own inability to check

Betty. And he told her of the fright of the others, and their anxiety,

and that he had sent them straight ahead to camp, while he struck into

the timber where Betty had left the old trail.

"I promised them to have word of you soon," he added; "and I reckon

they'll be mighty glad you can take the word yourself--it's more than

they expected. She might have killed you."

His tone and repetition of the words showed the fear that had been

uppermost in his thoughts.

"Yes--she might," agreed the girl. "That is a lesson to me for my

willfulness;" and then she smiled mockingly with a gleam of her old

humor, adding: "And so in the future, for the sake of my neck and the

safety of my bones, I will be most obedient to orders, Mr. Genesee

Jack."

He only looked at her across the flickering circle of light from the

torch. It must have dazzled his eyes, for in putting on his hat he

pulled it rather low over his forehead, and turning his back abruptly on

her he walked over for Mowitza.

But he did not bring her at once. He stood with his elbows on her

shoulders and his head bent over his clasped hands, like a man who is

thinking--or else very tired.

Rachel had again slipped down beside the tree; her head still seemed to

spin around a little if she stood long; and from that point of vantage

she could easily distinguish the immovable form in the shifting lights

and shadows.

"What is the matter with the man?" she asked herself as he stood there.

"He was glad to find me--I know it; and why he should deliberately turn

his back and walk away like that, I can't see. But he shan't be cool or

sulky with me ever again; I won't let him."

And with this determination she said:

"Genesee!"

"Yes," he answered, but did not move.

"Now that you have found me, are you going to leave me here all night?"

she asked demurely.

"No, Miss," he answered, and laid his hand on the bridle. "Come,

Mowitza, we must take her to camp;" and striding back with quick,

decided movements that were rather foreign to his manner, he said:

"Here she is, Miss; can you ride on that saddle?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. I--I--suppose so; but how are you to get

there?"

"Walk," he answered concisely.

"Why, how far is it?"

"About five miles--straight across."

"Can we go straight across?"

"No."

She looked up at him and laughed, half vexed.

"Mr. Genesee Jack," she remarked, "you can be one of the most

aggravatingly non-committal men I ever met. It has grown as dark as a

stack of black cats, and I know we must have an ugly trip to make with

only one horse between us. Do you suppose I have no natural curiosity as

to how we are to get there, and when? Don't be such a lock-and-key

individual. I can't believe it is natural to you. It is an acquired

habit, and hides your real self often."

"And a good thing it does, I reckon," he returned; "locks and keys are

good things to have, Miss; don't quarrel with mine or my ways to-night;

wait till I leave you safe with your folks, then you can find fault or

laugh, whichever you please. It won't matter then."

His queer tone kept her from answering at once, and she sat still,

watching him adjust the stirrup, and then make a new torch of pine

splits and knots.

"What do you call a torch in Chinook?" she asked after a little,

venturing on the supposed safe ground of jargon.

"La gome towagh," he answered, splitting a withe to bind them

together, and using a murderous looking hunting-knife on which the light

glimmered and fretted.

"And a knife?" she added.

"Opitsah."

She looked up at him quickly. "Opitsah means sweetheart," she

returned; "I know that much myself. Are you not getting a little mixed,

Professor?"

"I think not," he said, glancing across at her; "the same word is used

for both; and," he added, thrusting the knife in its sheath and rising

to his feet, "I reckon the men who started the jargon knew what they

were talking about, too. Come, are you ready?"

Assuredly, though he had hunted for her, and been glad to find her

alive, yet now that he had found her he had no fancy for conversation,

and he showed a decided inclination to put a damper on her attempts at

it. He lifted her to the saddle, and walking at Mowitza's head, they

started on their home journey through the night.

"The moon will be up soon," he remarked, glancing up at the sky. "We

only need a torch for the gulch down below there."

She did not answer; the movement of the saddle brought back the

dizziness to her head--all the glare of the torch was a blur before her.

She closed her eyes, thinking it would pass away, but it did not, and

she wondered why he stalked on like that, just as if he did not care,

never once looking toward her or noticing how she was dropping forward

almost on Mowitza's neck. Then, as they descended a steep bit of hill,

she became too much lost to her surroundings for even that speculation,

and could only say slowly:

"Tsolo, Genesee?"

"No," he answered grimly, "not now."

But she knew or heard nothing of the tone that implied more than it

expressed. She could only reach gropingly toward him with one hand, as

if to save herself from falling from the saddle. Only her finger-tips

touched his shoulder--it might have been a drooping branch out of the

many under which they went, for all the weight of it; but grim and

unresponsive as he was in some ways, he turned, through some quick

sympathy at the touch of her hand, and caught her arm as she was about

to fall forward. In an instant she was lifted from the saddle to her

feet, and his face was as white as hers as he looked at her.

"Dead!" he said, in a quiet sort of way, as her hand dropped nerveless

from his own, and he lifted her in his arms, watching for some show of

life in the closed lids and parted lips. And then with a great shivering

breath, he drew the still face to his own, and in a half-motherly way

smoothed back the fair hair as if she had been a child, whispering over

and over: "Not dead, my pretty! not you, my girl! Here, open your eyes;

listen to me; don't leave me like this until I tell you--tell you--God!

I wish I was dead beside you! Ah, my girl! my girl!"

CHAPTER VII.

UNDER THE CHINOOK MOON.

Ikt polaklie konaway moxt.

Over the crowns of the far hills the moon wheeled slowly up into the

sky, giving the shadows a cloak of blue mist, and vying with the

forgotten torch in lighting up the group in the gulch. The night winds

rustled through the leaves and sighed through the cedars; and the girl's

voice, scarcely louder than the whispers of the wood, said: "Genesee!

Tillie!"

"Yes, Miss," the man answered, as he lowered her head from his shoulder

to the sward, making a pillow for her of his hat. With returning life

and consciousness she again slipped out of his reach or possession, and

himself and his emotions were put aside, to be hidden from her eyes.

Through the blessing of death, infinite possession comes to so many

souls that life leaves beggared; and in those hurried moments of

uncertainty, she belonged to him more fully than he could hope for while

she lived.

"Is it you, Genesee?" she said, after looking at him drowsily for a

little. "I--I thought Tillie was here, crying, and kissing me."

"No, Miss, you fainted, I reckon, and just dreamed that part of it," he

answered, but avoiding the eyes that, though drowsy, looked so directly

at him.

"I suppose so," she agreed. "I tried to reach you when I felt myself

going; but you wouldn't look around. Did you catch me?"

"Yes; and I don't think you were quite square with me back there; you

told me you were all right; but you must have got hurt more than you

owned up to. Why didn't you tell me?"

"But I am not--indeed I am not!" she persisted. "I was not at all

injured except for the jar of the fall; it leaves me dizzy and sick when

I sit upright in the saddle--that is all."

"And it is enough," he returned decidedly; "do you 'spose, if you'd told

me just how you felt, I should have set you there to ride through these

hills and hollows?"

"What else could you do?" she asked; "you couldn't bring a carriage for

me."

"May be not, but I could have ridden Mowitza myself and carried you."

"That would be funny," she smiled. "Poor Mowitza! could she carry

double?"

"Yes," he answered curtly; perhaps the situation did not strike him in a

humorous light. "Yes, she can, and that's what she will have to do. Let

me know when you feel able to start."

"I think I do now," she said, raising herself from the ground; "I am a

little shaky, but if I do not have to sit upright I can keep my wits

about me, I believe. Will you help me, please?"

He lifted her into the saddle without a word, and then mounting himself,

he took her in front of him, circling her with one arm and guiding

Mowitza with the other, with as much unconcern as if he had carried

damsels in like cavalier fashion all his life.

They rode on in silence for a little through the shadows of the valley,

where the moon's light only fell in patches. His eyes were straight

ahead, on the alert for gullies and pitfalls along the blind trail. He

seemed to have no glances for the girl whose head was on his shoulder,

but whom he held most carefully. Once he asked how she felt, and if she

was comfortable; and she said "Yes, thank you," very demurely, with that

mocking smile about her lips. She felt like laughing at the whole

situation--all the more so because he looked so solemn, almost grim. She

always had an insane desire to laugh when in circumstances where any

conventional woman would be gathering up her dignity. It had got her

into scrapes often, and she felt as if it was likely to do so now. The

movement of the horse no longer made her ill, since she did not have to

sit upright; she was only a little dizzy at times, as if from the

rocking of a swing, and lazily comfortable with that strong arm and

shoulder for support.

"I am afraid I am getting heavy," she remarked after a while; "if I

could get my arm around back of you and hold either the saddle or reach

up to your shoulder, I might not be such a dead weight on your arm."

"Just as you like," was the brief reply that again aroused her desire to

laugh. It did seem ridiculous to be forced into a man's arms like that,

and the humorous part of it was heightened, in her eyes, by his apparent

sulkiness over the turn affairs had taken.

She slipped her arm across his back, however, and up to his shoulder,

thus lightening her weight on the arm that circled her, an attempt to

which he appeared indifferent. And so they rode on out of the valley

into the level land at the foot of the hills, and then into the old

trail where the route was more familiar and not so much care needed.

The girl raised her head drowsily as she noted some old landmarks in the

misty light.

"Poor Mowitza!" she said; "she did not have such a load when she came

over this road before; it was the day after you joined us, do you

remember?"

"Yes."

Remember! It had been the gateway through which he had gained a glimpse

into a new world--those days that were tinged with the delightful

suggestions of dawn. He smiled rather grimly at the question, but she

could not see his face very well, under the shadow of his wide hat.

"Has Mowitza ever before had to carry double?"

There was a little wait after her question--perhaps he was trying to

remember; then he said:

"Yes."

She wanted to ask who, and under what circumstances, but someway was

deterred by his lock-and-key manner, as she called it. She rather

commended herself for her good humor under its influence, and wondered

that she only felt like laughing at his gruffness. With any other person

she would have felt like retaliating, and she lay there looking up into

the shadowy face with a mocking self-query as to why he was made an

exception of.

"Genesee!" she began, after one of those long spells of silence; and

then the utterance of the name suggested a new train of thought--"by the

way, is your name Genesee?"

He did not answer at once--was he trying to remember that also?

"I wish you would tell me," she continued, more gently than was usual

with her. "I am going away soon; I should like to know by what real name

I am to remember you when I am back in Kentucky. Is your name Jack

Genesee?"

"No," he said at last; "Genesee is a name that stuck to me from some

mines where I worked, south of this. If I went back to them I would be

called Kootenai Jack, perhaps, because I came from here. Plenty of men

are known by names out here that would not be recognized at home, if

they have a home.

"But your name is Jack" she persisted.

"Yes, my name is Jack."

But he did not seem inclined to give any further information on the

subject that just then was of interest to her, and she did not like to

question further, but contented herself with observing:

"I shan't call you Genesee any more."

"Just as you like, Miss."

Again came that crazy desire of hers to laugh, and although she kept

silent, it was a convulsive silence--one of heaving bosom and quivering

shoulders. To hide it, she moved restlessly, changing her position

somewhat, and glancing about her.

"Not much farther to go," she remarked; "won't they be surprised to find

you carrying me into camp like this? I wonder if Betty came this way, or

if they found her--the little vixen! There is only one more hill to

cross until we reach camp--is there not?"

"Only one more."

"And both Mowitza and yourself will need a good rest when we get there,"

she remarked. "Your arm must feel paralyzed. Do you know I was just

thinking if you had found me dead in that gulch, you would have had to

carry me back over this trail, just like this. Ugh! What a dismal ride,

carrying a dead woman!"

His arm closed around her quickly, and he drew a deep breath as he

looked at her.

"I don't know," he said in a terse way, as if through shut teeth;

"perhaps it wouldn't have been so dismal, for I might never have come

back. I might have staid there--with you."

She could see his eyes plainly enough when he looked at her like that;

even the shadows could not cover their warmth; they left little to be

expressed in words, and neither attempted any. Her face turned away from

him a little, but her hand slipped into the clasp of his fingers, and so

they rode on in silence.

The brow of the last hill was reached. Down below them could be seen the

faint light from the camp-fire, and for an instant Mowitza was halted

for a breathing-spell ere she began the descent. The girl glanced down

toward the fire-light, and then up to his face.

"You can rest now," she said, with the old quizzical smile about her

lips, even while her fingers closed on his own. "There is the camp;

alta nika wake tsolo" (now you no longer wander in the dark).

But there was no answering smile on his face--not even at the pleasure

of the language that at times had seemed a tacit bond between them. He

only looked at her in the curious way she had grown accustomed to in

him, and said:

"The light down there is for you; I don't belong to it. Just try and

remember that after--after you are safe with your folks."

"I shall remember a great deal," returned the girl in her independent

tone; "among other things, the man who brought me back to them. Now, why

don't you say, 'Just as you like, Miss?' You ought to--to be natural."

But her raillery brought no more words from him. His face had again its

sombre, serious look, and in silence he guided Mowitza's feet down

toward the glow-light. Once a puff of wind sent the girl's hair blowing

across her face, and he smoothed it back carefully that he might see her

eyes in the moonlight; but the half-caress in the movement was as if

given to a child. All the quick warmth was gone from his eyes and speech

after that one comprehensive outbreak, and the girl was puzzled at the

change that had come in its stead. He was so gentle, but so guarded--the

touch even of his fingers on her shoulder was tremulous, as if with the

weight of resistance forced into them. She did not feel like laughing

any longer, after they began the descent of the hill. His manner had

impressed her too strongly with the feeling of some change to come with

the end of that ride and the eventful moonlight night, but no words came

to her; but her hand remained in his of its own accord, not because it

was held there, and she lay very quiet, wondering if he would not

speak--would say nothing more to her ere they joined the others, to whom

they were moving nearer at every step.

He did not. Once his fingers closed convulsively over her own. His eyes

straight ahead caused her to glance in that direction, and she saw

Tillie and Hardy clearly, in the moonlight, walking together

hand-in-hand down toward the glow of the camp-fire. On a ledge of rock

that jutted out clear from the shadowy brush, they lingered for an

instant. The soft blue light and the silence made them look a little

ghostly--a tryst of spirits--as the tall shoulders drooped forward with

circling arms into which Tillie crept, reaching upward until their faces

met. The eyes of those two on horseback turned involuntarily toward each

other at the sight of those married lovers, but there was no echo of a

caress in their own movements, unless it was the caress of a glance; and

in a few moments more they were within speaking distance of the camp.

"We are here," he said slowly, as Hardy and his wife, hearing the steps

of the horse, hurried toward them.

"Yes, I know," she whispered.

It was their good-bye to the night.

A neigh from the renegade Betty was answered by Mowitza, and in an

instant all the group about the camp was alive to the fact of the

return. But the eager questions received few answers, for Genesee handed

Rachel into the arms of Hardy, and said to Tillie:

"Don't let them pester her with questions to-night, Mrs. Hardy. She has

no injuries, I guess, only she's used up and needs rest badly. I found

her ready to faint in a gulch back from the trail about three miles.

She'll be all right to-morrow, I reckon; only see that she gets a good

rest and isn't bothered to-night."

No need to tell them that. Their gladness at her safe return made them

all consideration.

Genesee and Mowitza also came in for a share of their solicitude, and

the former for a quantity of thanks that met with rather brusque

response.

"That's nothing to thank a man for," he said a little impatiently, as

the Houghtons were contributing their share. "I reckon you don't know

much about the duties of a scout or guide in this country, or you would

know it was my business to go for the lady--just as it would be to hunt

up lost stock, if any had strayed off. There wasn't much of a trick in

finding her--Betty left too clear a trail; and I reckon it's time we all

turned in to sleep instead of talking about it."

In the morning Rachel awoke refreshed and expectant in a vague way. The

incidents of the night before came crowding to her memory, sending the

blood tingling through her veins as she thought of their meeting; of the

ride; of those few significant words of his, and his face as he had

spoken. She wondered at herself accepting it all so dreamily--as if in a

lethargy. She was far from a stupor at the thought of it in the light of

the early day, as she watched the blue mists rising up, up, from the

valleys. Was he watching them, too? Was he thinking as she was of that

ride and its revelations? Would he meet her again with that queer,

distant manner of his? Would he--

Her ruminations were cut short by Tillie, who thought to awaken her with

the proffer of a cup of hot coffee, and who was surprised to find her

awake.

"Yes, I am awake, and hungry, too," she said briskly; "you did not give

me nearly enough to eat last night. Is breakfast all ready? I wonder how

poor Mowitza is this morning after her heavy load. Say, Tillie, did we

look altogether ridiculous?"

"No, you did not," said Tillie stoutly. "It was wonderfully kind of him

to bring you so carefully. I always said he had a great deal of heart in

him; but he is gone, already."

"Gone!--where?" And the cup of coffee was set on the grass as if the

hunger and thirst were forgotten. "Where?"

"We don't know," said Tillie helplessly. "Clara says back to his tribe;

but she always has something like that to say of him. It's the queerest

thing; even Hen is puzzled. He was wakened this morning about dawn by

Genesee, who told him his time was up with the party; that we could

follow the trail alone well enough now; and that he had to join some

Indian hunters away north of this to-night, so had to make an early

start. I guess he forgot to speak of it last night, or else was too

tired. He left a good-bye for Hen to deliver for him to the rest of us,

and a klahowya to you."

"Did he?" asked the girl with a queer little laugh. "That was thoughtful

of him. May his hunting be prosperous and his findings be great."

"Dear me!" said Tillie weakly, "you are just as careless about it as

Clara, and I did think you would be sorry to lose him. I am, and so is

Hen; but evidently persuasions were of no avail. He said he could not

even wait for breakfast; that he should have gone last night. And the

queerest thing about it is that he utterly refused any money from Hen,

on the plea that the whole affair had been a pleasure ride, not work at

all; and so--he is gone."

"And so--he is gone," said the girl, mimicking her tone; "what a

tragical manner over a very prosaic circumstance! Tillie, my child,

don't be so impressible, or I shall have to tell Hen that our guide has

taken your affections in lieu of greenbacks."

"Rachel!"

"Matilda!" said the other mildly, looking teasingly over the rim of the

coffee-cup she was slowly emptying. "Don't startle me with that tone

before breakfast, and don't grieve over the exodus of Mr. Genesee Jack.

I shall take on my own shoulders the duties of guide in his stead, so

you need not worry about getting home safely; and in the meantime I am

woefully hungry."

She was still a little dizzy as she rose to her feet, and very stiff and

sore from her ride; but, joking over her rheumatic joints, she limped

over to where the breakfast was spread on a flat rock.

"There is one way in which I may not be able to take Mr. Genesee Jack's

place, in your estimation," she said lowly to Tillie as they were about

to join the others. "I shall not be able to tell you stories of Indian

conjurors or sing you Indian love-songs. I can't do anything but

whistle."

"Hen, she wasn't the least bit interested about him leaving like that!"

said Tillie confidentially to her husband a few hours later. "She never

does seem to have much feeling for anything; but after he brought her

back so carefully, and after the chumminess there was between them for a

while, one would naturally think--"

"Of course one would," agreed her husband laughingly, "especially if one

was an affectionate, match-making little person like yourself, and

altogether a woman. But Rache--" and his glance wandered ahead to where

the slim figure of the girl was seen stubbornly upright on Betty--"well,

Rache never was like the rest of the girls at home, and I fancy she will

never understand much of the sentimental side of life. She is too

level-headed and practical."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STORM--AND AFTER.

Olapitski yahka ships.

Two weeks later storm-clouds were flying low over the Kootenai hills and

chasing shadows over the faces of two equestrians who looked at each

other in comic dismay.

"Jim, we are lost!" stated the one briefly.

"I allow we are, Miss Hardy," answered the other, a boy of about

fifteen, who gazed rather dubiously back over the way they had come and

ahead where a half-blind trail led up along the mountain.

"Suppose we pitch pennies to see what direction to take," suggested the

girl; but the boy only laughed.

"Haven't much time for that, Miss," he answered. "Look how them clouds

is crowdin' us; we've got to hunt cover or get soaked. This trail goes

somewhere; may be to an Injun village. I allow we'd better freeze to

it."

"All right. We'll allow that we had," agreed Miss Hardy. "Betty, get

around here, and get up this hill! I know every step is taking us

farther from the ranch, but this seems the only direction in which a

trail leads. Jim, how far do you suppose we are from home?"

"'Bout fifteen miles, I guess," said the boy, looking blue.

"And we haven't found the lost sheep?"

"No, we haven't."

"And we have got lost?"

"Yes."

"Jim, I don't believe we are a howling success as sheep farmers."

"I don't care a darn about the sheep just now," declared Jim. "What I

want to know is where we are to sleep to-night."

"Oh, you want too much," she answered briskly; "I am content to sit up

all night, if I only can find a dry place to stay in--do you hear that?"

as the thunder that had grumbled in the distance now sounded its threats

close above them.

"Yes, I hear it, and it means business, too. I wish we were at the end

of this trail," he said, urging his horse up through the scrubby growth

of laurel.

The darkness was falling so quickly that it was not an easy matter to

keep the trail; and the wind hissing through the trees made an open

space a thing to wish for. Jim, who was ahead, gave a shout as he

reached the summit of the hill where the trail crossed it.

"We're right!" he yelled that she might hear his voice above the thunder

and the wind; "there's some sort of a shanty across there by a big pond;

it's half a mile away, an' the rain's a-comin'--come on!"

And on they went in a wild run to keep ahead of the rain-cloud that was

pelting its load at them with the force of hail. The girl had caught a

glimpse of the white sheen of a lake or pond ahead of them; the shanty

she did not wait to pick out from the gloom, but followed blindly after

Jim, at a breakneck gait, until they both brought up short, in the

shadow of a cabin in the edge of the timber above the lake.

"Jump off quick and in with you" called Jim; and without the ceremony of

knocking, she pushed open the door and dived into the interior.

It was almost as dark as night. She stumbled around until she found a

sort of bed in one corner, and sat down on it, breathless and wet. The

rain was coming down in torrents, and directly Jim, with the saddles in

his arms, came plunging in, shaking himself like a water-spaniel.

"Great guns! But it's comin' down solid," he gasped; "where are you?"

"Here--I've found a bed, so somebody lives here. Have you any matches?"

"I allow I have," answered Jim, "if they only ain't wet--no, by George,

they're all right."

The brief blaze of the match showed him the fire-place and a pile of

wood beside it, and a great osier basket of broken bark. "Say, Miss

Hardy, we've struck great luck," he announced while on his knees,

quickly starting a fire and fanning it into a blaze with his hat; "I

wonder who lives here and where they are. Stickin' to that old trail was

a pay streak--hey?"

In the blaze of the fire the room assumed quite a respectable

appearance. It was not a shanty, as Jim had at first supposed, but a

substantial log-cabin, furnished in a way to show constant and recent

occupation.

A table made like a wide shelf jutted from the wall under the one square

window; a bed and two chairs that bespoke home manufacture were covered

by bear-skins; on the floor beside the bed was a buffalo-robe; and a

large locked chest stood against the wall. Beside the fire-place was a

cupboard with cooking and table utensils, and around the walls hung

trophies of the hunt. A bow and quiver of arrows and a knotted silken

sash hung on one wooden peg, and added to a pair of moccasins in the

corner, gave an Indian suggestion to the occupancy of the cabin, but the

furnishing in general was decidedly that of a white person; to the

rafters were fastened some beaver-paws and bear-claws, and the skins of

three rattlesnakes were pendent against the wall.

"Well, this is a queer go! ain't it?" remarked Jim as he walked around

taking a survey of the room. "I'd like to know who it all belongs to.

Did you ever hear folks about here speak of old Davy MacDougall?"

"Yes, I have," answered the girl, sitting down on the buffalo-robe

before the fire, to dry her shoulders at the blaze.

"Well, I believe this is his cabin, and we are about ten mile from

home," decided the boy. "I didn't think we'd strayed as far north as

Scot's Mountain, but I allow this is it."

"Well, I wish he would come home and get supper," said the girl, easily

adapting herself to any groove into which she happened to fall; "but

perhaps we should have sent him word of our visit. What did you do with

the horses, Jim?"

"Put 'em in a shed at the end o' the house--a bang-up place, right on

the other side o' this fire-place. Whoever lives here keeps either a

horse or a cow."

"I hope it's a cow, and that there's some milk to be had. Jimmy, I

wonder if there is anything to eat in that cupboard."

"I've been thinkin' o' that myself," said Jim in answer to that

insinuating speech.

"Suppose you do something besides think--suppose you look," suggested

the more unscrupulous of the foragers; "I'm hungry."

"So am I," acknowledged her confederate; "you an' me is most alike about

our eatin', ain't we? Mrs. Houghton said yesterday I had a terrible

appetite."

The boy at once began making an examination of the larder, wondering, as

he did so, what the girl was laughing at.

The rain was coming down in torrents through the blackness of the night;

now and then the lightning would vie with the fire in lighting up the

room, while the thunder seemed at home in that valley of the mountain,

for its volleys of sound and their echoes never ceased.

Small wonder that anyone's house would seem a home to the two, or that

they would have no compunction in taking possession of it.

"There's coffee here somewhere, I can smell it," announced Jim; "an'

here's rice an' crackers, an' corn-meal, an' dried raspberries, an'

potatoes, an'--yes, here's the coffee! Say, Miss Hardy, we'll have a

regular feast!"

"I should say so!" remarked that lady, eyeing Jim's "find" approvingly;

"I think there is a bed of coals here at this side of the fire-place

that will just fit about six of those potatoes--can you eat three, Jim?"

"Three will do if they're big enough," said Jim, looking dubiously at

the potatoes; "but these ain't as good-sized as some I've seen."

"Then give me two more; that makes five for you and three for me."

"Hadn't you better shove in a couple more?" asked Jim with a dash of

liberality. "You know MacDougall may come back hungry, an' then we can

spare him two--that makes ten to roast."

"Ten it is!" said the girl, burying two more in the ashes as the share

of their host. "Jim, see if there is any water in here to make coffee

with."

"Yes, a big jar full," reported the steward; "an' here is a little crock

half full of eggs--prairie-chicken, I guess--say, can you make a pone?"

"I think I can;" and the cook at once rolled up the sleeves of her

riding-dress, and Jimmy brought out the eggs and some bits of salt

meat--evidently bear-meat--that was hung from the ceiling of the

cupboard; at once there began a great beating of eggs and stirring up of

a corn pone; some berries were set on the coals to stew in a tin-cup,

the water put to boil for the coffee, and an iron skillet with a lid

utilized as an oven; and the fragrance of the preparing eatables filled

the little room and prompted the hungry lifting of lids many times ere

the fire had time to do its work.

"That pone's a 'dandy!'" said Jim, taking a peep at it; "it's gettin' as

brown as--as your hair; an' them berries is done, an' ain't it time to

put in the coffee?"

Acting on this hint, the coffee, beaten into a froth with an egg, had

the boiling water poured over it, and set bubbling and aromatic on the

red coals.

"You mayn't be much use to find strayed-off stock," said Jim

deliberately, with his head on one side, as he watched the apparent ease

with which the girl managed her primitive cooking apparatus; "but I tell

you--you ain't no slouch when it comes to gettin' grub ready, and

gettin' it quick."

"Better keep your compliments until you have tried to eat some of the

cooking," suggested Miss Hardy, on her knees before the fire. "I believe

the pone is done."

"Then we'll dish-up in double-quick," said Jim, handing her two tin pans

for the pone and potatoes. "We'll have to set the berries on in the

tin--by George! what's that?"

"That" was the neigh of Betty in the shed by the chimney, and an

answering one from somewhere out in the darkness. Through the thunder

and the rain they had heard no steps, but Jim's eyes were big with

suspense as he listened.

"My horse has broke loose from the shed," he said angrily, reaching for

his hat; "and how the dickens I'm to find him in this storm I don't

know."

"Don't be so quick to give yourself a shower-bath," suggested the girl

on the floor; "he won't stray far off, and may be glad to come back to

the shed; and then again," she added, laughing, "it may be MacDougall."

Jim looked rather blankly at the supper on the hearth and the girl who

seemed so much at home on the buffalo-robe.

"By George! it might be," he said slowly; and for the first time the

responsibility of their confiscations loomed up before him. "Say," he

added uneasily, "have you any money?"

"Money?" she repeated inquiringly; and then seeing the drift of his

thoughts, "Oh, no, I haven't a cent."

"They say MacDougall is an old crank," he insinuated, looking at her out

of the corner of his eye, to see what effect the statement would have on

her. But she only smiled in an indifferent way. "An'--an' ef he wants

the money cash down for this lay-out"--and he glanced comprehensively

over the hearth--"well, I don't know what to say."

"That's easily managed," said the girl coolly; "you can leave your horse

in pawn."

"An' foot it home ten miles?--not if I know it!" burst out Jim; "an'

besides it's Hardy's horse."

"Well, then, leave the saddle, and ride home bareback."

"I guess not!" protested Jim, with the same aggressive tone; "that's my

own saddle."

After this unanswerable reason, there was an expectant silence in the

room for a little while, that was finally broken by Jim saying ruefully:

"If that is MacDougall, he'll have to have them two potatoes."

Rachel's risible tendencies were not proof against this final fear of

Jim's, and her laughter drowned his grumblings, and also footsteps

without, of which neither heard a sound until the door was flung open

and a man walked into the room.

Jim looked at him with surprised eyes, and managed to stammer, "How are

you?" for the man was so far from his idea of old Davy MacDougall that

he was staggered.

But Miss Hardy only looked up, laughing, from her position by the fire,

and drew the coffee-pot from the coals with one hand, while she reached

the other to the new-comer.

"Klahowya! Mr. Jack," she said easily; "got wet, didn't you? You are

just in time for supper."

"You!" was all he said; and Jim thought they were both crazy, from the

way the man crossed the room to her and took her one hand in both his as

if he never intended letting it go or saying another word, content only

to hold her hand and look at her. And Miss Rachel Hardy's eyes were not

idle either.

"Yes, of course it's I," she said, slipping her hand away after a

little, and dropping her face that had flushed pink in the fire-light;

"I don't look like a ghost, do I? You would not find a ghost at such

prosaic work as getting supper."

"Getting supper?" he said, stepping back a bit and glancing around. For

the first time he seemed to notice Jim, or have any remembrance of

anything but the girl herself. "You mean that you two have been getting

supper alone?"

"Yes, Jim and I. Mr. Jack, this is my friend Jim, from the ranch. We

tried to guide each other after sheep, and both got lost; and as you did

not get here in time to cook supper, of course we had to do it alone."

"But I mean was there no one else here?"--he still looked a little dazed

and perplexed, his eyes roving uneasily about the room--"I--a--a young

Indian--"

"No!" interrupted the girl eagerly. "Do you mean the Indian boy who

brought me that black bear's skin? I knew you had sent it, though he

would not say a word--looked at me as if he did not understand Chinook

when I spoke."

"May be he didn't understand yours," remarked Jimmy, edging past her to

rake the potatoes out of the ashes.

"But he wasn't here when we came," continued Miss Hardy. "The house was

deserted and in darkness when we found it, just as the storm came on in

earnest."

"And the fire?" said Genesee.

"There was none," answered the boy. "The ashes were stone-cold. I

noticed it; so your Injun hadn't had any fire all day."

"All day!" repeated the man, going to the door and looking out. "That

means a long tramp, and to-night--"

"And to-night is a bad one for a tramp back," added Jim.

"Yes," agreed Genesee, "that's what I was thinking."

If there was a breath of relief in the words, both were too occupied

with the potatoes in the ashes to notice it. He shut the door directly

as the wind sent a gust of rain inside, and then turned again to the

pirates at the fire-place.

"What did you find to cook?" he asked, glancing at the "lay-out," as Jim

called it. "I haven't been here since yesterday, and am afraid you

didn't find much--any fresh meat?"

Miss Hardy shook her head.

"Salt meat and eggs, that's all," she said.

"Not by a long shot it ain't, Mr.--Mr Jack," said Jim, contradicting her

flatly. "She's got a first-class supper; an' by George! she can make

more out o' nothin' than any woman I ever seen." In his enthusiasm over

Rachel he was unconscious of the slur on their host's larder. "I never

knowed she was such a rattlin' cook!"

"I know I have never been given credit for my everyday, wearing

qualities," said the girl, without looking up from the eggs she was

scrambling in the bake-oven of a few minutes before. The words may have

been to Jim, but by the man's eyes he evidently thought they were at

Genesee--such a curious, pained look as that with which he watched her

every movement, every curve of form and feature, that shone in the light

of the fire. Once she saw the look, and her own eyes dropped under it

for a moment, but that independence of hers would not let it be for

long.

"Do you want a share of our supper?" she asked, looking up at him

quizzically.

"Yes," he answered, but his steady, curious gaze at her showed that his

thoughts were not of the question or answer.

Not so Jim. That young gentleman eyed dubiously first the lay-out and

then Genesee's physique, trying to arrive at a mental estimate of his

capacity and the probable division of the pone and potatoes.

"How about that saddle, now, Jim?" asked the girl. Whereupon Jim began a

pantomime enjoining silence, back of the chair of the man, who appeared

more like a guest than host--perhaps because it was so hard to realize

that it was really his hearth where that girl sat as if at home. She

noticed his preoccupation, and remarked dryly:

"You really don't deserve a share of our cooking after the way you

deserted us before!--not even a klahowya when you took the trail."

"You're right, I reckon; but don't you be the one to blame me for that,"

he answered, in a tone that made the command a sort of plea; and Miss

Hardy industriously gave her attention to the supper.

"It's all ready," announced Jim, as he juggled a pan of hot pone from

one hand to another on the way to the table. "Ouch! but it's hot! Say,

wouldn't some fresh butter go great with this!"

"Didn't you find any?" asked Genesee, waking to the practical things of

life at Jim's remark.

"Find any? No! Is there any?" asked that little gourmand, with hope and

doubt chasing each other over his rather thin face.

"I don't know--there ought to be;" and lifting a loose board in the

floor by the cupboard, he drew forth a closely-woven reed basket, and on

a smooth stone in the bottom lay a large piece of yellow butter, around

which Jim performed a sort of dance of adoration.

What a supper that was, in the light of the pitch-pine and the fierce

accompaniment of the outside tempest! Jim vowed that never were there

potatoes so near perfection, in their brown jackets and their steaming,

powdery flakes; and the yellow pone, and the amber coffee, and the cool

slices of butter that Genesee told them was from an Indian village

thirty miles north. And to the table were brought such tremendous

appetites! at least by the cook and steward of the party. And above all,

what a delicious atmosphere of unreality pervaded the whole thing! Again

and again Genesee's eyes seemed to say, "Can it be you?" and grew warm

as her quizzical glances told him it could be no one else.

As the night wore on, and the storm continued, he brought in armfuls of

wood from the shed without, and in the talk round the fire his manner

grew more assured--more at home with the surroundings that were yet his

own. Long they talked, until Jim, unable to think of any more questions

to ask of silver-mining and bear-hunting, slipped down in the corner,

with his head on a saddle, and went fast asleep.

"I'll sit up and keep the fire going," said Genesee, at this sign of the

late hour; "but you had better get what rest you can on that bunk

there--you'll need it for your ride in the morning."

"In the morning!" repeated the girl coolly; "that sounds as if you are

determined our visit shall end as soon as possible, Mr. Genesee Jack."

"Don't talk like that!" he said, looking across at her; "you don't know

anything about it." And getting up hastily, he walked back and forward

across the room; once stopping suddenly, as if with some determination

to speak, and then, as she looked up at him, his courage seemed to

vanish, and he turned his face away from her and walked to the door.

The storm had stilled its shrieks, and was dying away in misty moans

down the dip in the hills, taking the rain with it. The darkness was

intense as he held the door open and looked into the black vault, where

not a glimmer of a star or even a gray cloud could be seen.

"It's much nicer in-doors," decided Miss Hardy, moving her chair against

the chimney-piece, and propping herself there to rest.

"Jim had better lie on the bed, he is so sleepy, and I am not at all so;

this chair is good enough for me, if you don't mind."

He picked the sleeping boy up without a word, and laid him on the couch

of bear-skins without waking him.

"There isn't much I do mind," he said, as he came back to the

fire-place; "that is, if you are only comfortable."

"I am--very much so," she answered, "and would be entirely so if you

only seemed a little more at home. As it is, I have felt all evening as

if we are upsetting your peace of mind in some way--not as if we are

unwelcome, mind you, but just as if you are worried about us."

"That so?" he queried, not looking at her; "that's curious. I didn't

know I was looking so, and I'm sure you and the boy are mighty welcome

to my cabin or anything in the world I can do for you."

There was no mistaking the heartiness of the man's words, and she smiled

her gratitude from the niche in the corner, where, with her back toward

the blaze, only one side of her face was outlined by the light.

"Very well," she said amicably; "you can do something for me just

now--open the door for a little while; the room seems close with being

shut up so tight from the rain--and then make yourself comfortable there

on that buffalo-robe before the fire. I remember your lounging habits in

the camp, and a chair doesn't seem to quite suit you. Yes, that looks

much better, as if you were at home again."

Stretched on the robe, with her saddle on which to prop up his

shoulders, he lay, looking in the red coals, as if forgetful of her

speech or herself. But at last he repeated her words:

"At home again! Do you know there's a big lot of meaning in those words,

Miss, especially to a man who hasn't known what home meant for years?

and to-night, with white people in my cabin and a white woman to make

things look natural, I tell you it makes me remember what home used to

be, in a way I have not experienced for many a day."

"Then I'm glad I strayed off into the storm and your cabin," said the

girl promptly; "because a man shouldn't forget his home and home-folks,

especially if the memories would be good ones. People need all the good

memories they can keep with them in this world; they're a sort of

steering apparatus in a life-boat, and help a man make a straight

journey toward his future."

"That's so," he said, and put his hand up over his eyes as if to shield

them from the heat of the fire. He was lying full in the light, while

she was in the shadow. He could scarcely see her features, with her head

drawn back against the wall like that. And the very fact of knowing

herself almost unseen--a voice, only, speaking to him--gave her courage

to say things as she could not have said them at another time.

"Do you know," she said, as she sat there watching him with his eyes

covered by his hand--"do you know that once or twice when we have been

together I have wished I was a man, that I could say some things to you

that a woman or a girl--that is, most girls--can't say very well? One of

the things is that I should be glad to hear of you getting out of this

life here; there is something wrong about it to you--something that

doesn't suit you; I don't know what it is, but I can see you are not the

man you might be--and ought to be. I've thought of it often since I saw

you last, and sometimes--yes--I've been sorry for my ugly manner toward

you. White people, when they meet in these out-of-the-way places in the

world, ought to be as so many brothers and sisters to each other; and

there were times, often, when I might have helped you to feel at home

among us--when I might have been more kind."

"More kind? Good God!" whispered the man.

"And I made up my mind," continued the girl courageously, "that if I

ever saw you again, I was going to speak plainly to you about yourself

and the dissatisfaction with yourself that you spoke of that day in the

laurel thicket. I don't know what the cause of it is, and I don't want

to, but if it is any wrong that you've done in--in the past, a bad way

to atone is by burying oneself alive, along with all energy and

ambition. Now, you may think me presuming to say these things to you

like this; but I've been wishing somebody would say them to you, and

there seems no one here to do it but me, and so--"

She stopped, not so much because she had finished as because she felt

herself failing utterly in saying the things she had really intended to

say. It all sounded very flat and commonplace in her own ears--not at

all the words to carry any influence to anyone, and so she stopped

helplessly and looked at him.

"I'm glad it is you that says them," he answered, still without looking

at her, "because you've got the stuff in you for such a good, square

friend to a man--the sort of woman a person could go to in trouble, even

if they hadn't the passport of a saint to take with them; and I wish--I

wish I could tell you to-night something of the things that you've

started on. If I could--" he stopped a moment.

"I suppose any other girl--" she began in a deprecating tone; but he

dropped his hand from his eyes and looked at her.

"You're not like other girls," he said with a great fondness in his

eyes, "and that's just the reason I feel like telling you all. You're

not like any girl I've ever known. I've often felt like speaking to you

as if you were a boy--an almighty aggravatin' slip of a boy sometimes;

and yet--"

He lay silent for a little while, so long that the girl wondered if he

had forgotten what he was to try to tell her. The warmth after the rain

had made them neglect the fire, and its blaze had dropped low and lower,

until she was entirely in the shadow--only across the hearth and his

form did the light fall.

"And yet," he continued, as if there had been no break in his speech,

"there's been many a night I've dreamed of seeing you sit here by this

fire-place just as I've seen you to-night; just as bright like and

contented, as if all the roughness and poorness of it was nothing to

you, or else a big joke for you to make fun of; and then--well, at such

times you didn't seem like a boy, but--"

Again he stopped.

"Never mind what I'm like," suggested the girl; "that doesn't matter. I

guess everyone seems a different person with different people; but you

wanted to tell me something of yourself, didn't you?"

"That's what I'm trying to get at," he answered, "but it isn't easy.

I've got to go back so far to start at the beginning--back ten years, to

reckon up mistakes. That's a big job, my girl--my girl."

The lingering repetition of those words opened the girl's eyes wide with

a sudden memory of that moonlit night in the gulch. Then she had not

fancied those whispered words! they had been uttered, and by his voice;

and those fancied tears of Tillie's, and--the kisses!

So thick came those thronging memories, that she did not notice his

long, dreamy silence. She was thinking of that night, and all the sweet,

vague suggestion in it that had vanished with the new day. She was

comparing its brief charm with this meeting of to-night that was

ignoring it so effectually; that was as the beginning of a new knowledge

of each other, with the commonplace and practical as a basis.

Her reverie was broken sharply by the sight of a form that suddenly,

silently, appeared in the door-way. Her first impulse of movement or

speech was checked as the faint, flickering light shifted across the

visage of the new-comer, and she recognized the Indian girl who had

hidden behind the ponies. A smile was on the dark face as she saw

Genesee lying there, asleep he must have looked from the door, and

utterly oblivious of her entrance. Her soft moccasins left no sound as

she crossed the floor and dropped down beside him, laying one arm about

his throat. He clasped the hand quickly and opened his half-shut eyes.

Did he, for an instant, mistake it for another hand that had slipped

into his that one night? Whatever he thought, his face was like that of

death as he met the eyes of the Indian girl.

"Talapa!" he muttered, and his fingers closing on her wrist must have

twisted it painfully, by the quick change in her half-Indian,

half-French face. He seemed hardly conscious of it. Just then he looked

at her as if she was in reality that Indian deity of the inferno from

whom her name was derived.

"Hyak nika kelapie!" (I returned quickly), she whined, as if puzzled

at her reception, and darting furious sidelong glances from the black

eyes that had the width between them that is given to serpents. "Nah!"

she ejaculated angrily, as no answer was made to her; and freeing her

hand, she rose to her feet. She had not once seen the white girl in the

shadow. Coming from the darkness into the light, her eyes were blinded

to all but the one plainly seen figure. But as she rose to her feet, and

Genesee with her, Rachel stooped to the pile of wood beside her, and

throwing some bits of pine on the fire, sent the sparks flying upward,

and a second later a blaze of light flooded the room.

The action was a natural, self-possessed one--it took a great deal to

upset Miss Hardy's equanimity--and she coolly sat down again facing the

astonished Indian girl and Genesee; but her face was very white, though

she said not a word.

"There is no need for me to try to remember the beginning, is there,"

said Genesee bitterly, looking at her with sombre, moody eyes, "since

the end has told its own story? This is--my--my--"

Did he say wife? She never could be quite sure of the word, but she knew

he tried to say it.

His voice sounded smothered, unnatural, as it had that day in the laurel

thicket when he had spoken of locking himself out from a heaven. She

understood what he meant now.

"No, there is no need," she said, as quietly as she could, though her

heart seemed choking her and her hands trembled. "I hope all will come

right for you sometime, and--I understand, now."

Did she really understand, even then, or know the moral lie the man had

told, the lie that, in his abasement, he felt was easier to have her

believe than the truth?

Talapa stood drying her moccasins at the fire, as if not understanding

their words; but the slow, cunning smile crept back to her lips as she

recognized the white girl, and no doubt remembered that she and Genesee

had ridden together that day at the camp.

He picked up his hat and walked to the door, after her kindly words,

putting his hand out ahead of him in a blind sort of way, and then

stopped, saying to her gently:

"Get what rest you can--try to, anyway; you will need it." And then,

with some words in Indian to Talapa, he went out into the night.

His words to Talapa were in regard to their guests' comfort, for that

silent individual at once began preparations for bed-making on her

behalf, until Rachel told her in Chinook that she would sleep in her

chair where she was. And there she sat through the night, feeling that

the eyes of the Indian girl were never taken from her as the motionless

form lay rolled in a blanket on the floor, much as it had rolled itself

up on the grass that other day.

Jim was throned in royal state, for he had the bed all to himself, and

in the morning opened his eyes in amazement as he smelled the coffee and

saw the Indian girl moving about as if at home.

"Yes, we've got a new cook, Jim," said Miss Hardy, from the window; "so

we are out of work, you and I. Sleep well?"

"Great!" said Jim, yawning widely. "Where's Mr. Jack?"

"Out, somewhere," returned the girl comprehensively. She did not add

that he had been out all night, and Jim was too much interested with the

prospect of breakfast to be very curious.

He had it, as he had the bed--all to himself. Miss Hardy was not hungry,

for a wonder, and Talapa disappeared after it was placed on the table.

The girl asked Jim if that was Indian etiquette, but Jim didn't know

what etiquette was, so he couldn't tell.

Through that long vigil of the night there had returned to the girl much

of her light, ironical manner; but the mockery was more of herself and

her own emotions than aught else, for when Genesee brought the horses to

the door and she looked in his face, any thought of jesting with him was

impossible; the signs of a storm were on him as they were on the

mountains in the morning light.

"I will guide you back to the home trail," he said as he held Betty at

the door for her to mount.

"Go in and get some breakfast," was all the answer she made him. But he

shook his head, and reached his hand to help her.

"What's the matter with everyone this morning?" asked Jim. "There hasn't

been a bite of breakfast eaten only what I got away with myself."

Genesee glanced in at the table. "Would you eat nothing because it was

mine?" he asked in a low tone.

"I did not because I could not," she said in the same tone; and then

added, good-humoredly: "Despite Jim's belief in my appetite, it does go

back on me sometimes--and this is one of the times. It's too early in

the morning for breakfast. Are you going with us on foot?" as she

noticed Mowitza, unsaddled, grazing about the green turf at the edge of

the timber.

"Yes," he answered, "I have not far to go."

She slipped past him, and gathering her dress up from the wet grass

walked over to where Mowitza browsed. The beautiful mare raised her head

and came over the grass with long, light steps, as if recognizing the

low call of her visitor; and resting her head on the girl's shoulder,

there seemed to be a conversation between them perfectly satisfactory to

each; while Mowitza's owner stood looking at them with a world of

conflicting emotions in his face.

"I have been saying good-bye to Mowitza," she remarked, as she joined

them and mounted Betty, "and we are both disconsolate. She carried me

out of danger once, and I am slow to forget a favor."

It was a very matter-of-fact statement; she was a matter-of-fact young

woman that morning. Genesee felt that she was trying to let him know her

memory would keep only the best of her knowledge of him. It was an added

debt to that which he already owed her, and he walked in silence at her

horse's head, finding no words to express his thoughts, and not daring

to use them if he had.

The valleys were wrapped in the whitest of mists as they got a glimpse

of them from the heights. The sun was struggling through one veil only

to be plunged into another, and all the cedar wood was in the drip, drip

of tears that follow tempests. Where was all that glory of the east at

sunrise which those two had once watched from a mountain not far from

this? In the east, as they looked now, there were only faint streaks of

lavender across the sky--of lavender the color of mourning.

He directed Jim the way of the trail, and then turned to her.

"I don't know what to say to you--or just how low you will think me," he

said in a miserable sort of way. "When I think of--of some things, I

wonder that you even speak to me this morning--God! I'm ashamed to look

you in the face!"

And he looked it. All the cool assurance that had been a prominent phase

of his personality that evening when Hardy met him first, was gone. His

handsome, careless face and the independent head were drooped before

hers as his broad-brimmed hat was pulled a little lower over his eyes.

Some women are curious, and this one, whom he had thought unlike all

others, rather justified his belief, as she bent over in the saddle and

lifted the cover from his dark hair.

"Don't be!" she said gently--and as he looked up at her she held out her

hand--"nika tillikum" (my friend); and the sweetness possible in the

words had never been known by him until she uttered them so. "My friend,

don't feel like that, and don't think me quite a fool. I've seen enough

of life to know that few men under the same circumstances would try as

hard to be honest as you did, and if you failed in some ways, the fault

was as much mine as yours."

"Rachel!" It was the first time he had ever called her that.

"Yes, I had some time to think about it last night," she said, with a

little ironical smile about her lips; "and the conclusion I've come to

is that we should afford to be honest this morning, and not--not so very

much ashamed;" and then she hurried on in her speech, stumbling a little

as the clasp of his hand made her unsteady through all her

determination. "I will not see you again, perhaps ever. But I want you

to know that I have faith in your making a great deal of your life if

you try; you have the right foundations--strong will and a good

principle. Mentally, you have been asleep here in the hills--don't find

fault with your awakening. And don't feel so--so remorseful about--that

night. There are some things people do and think that they can't

help--we couldn't help that night; and so--good-bye--Jack."

"God bless you, girl!" were the heart-felt, earnest words that answered

her good-bye; and with a last firm clasp of hands, she turned Betty's

head toward the trail Jim had taken, and rode away under the cedar

boughs.

Genesee stood bare-headed, with a new light in his eyes as he watched

her--the dawn of some growing determination.

Once she looked back, and seeing him still there, touched her cap in

military fashion, and with a smile disappeared in the wet woods. As he

turned away there crept from the shrubbery at the junction of the trails

Talapa, who, with that slow, knowing smile about her full lips, stole

after him--in her dusky silence a very shadow of a man's past that grows

heavy and wide after the noon is dead, and bars out lives from sunny

doors where happiness might be found. His head was bent low,

thinking--thinking as he walked back to the cabin that had once held at

least a sort of content--a content based on one side of his nature. Had

the other died, or was it only asleep? And she had told him not to find

fault with his awakening--she! He had never before realized the wealth

or loss one woman could make to the world.

"Ashamed to look her in the face!" His own words echoed in his ears as

he walked under the wet leaves, with the shadow of the shame skulking

unseen after him; and then, little by little, the sense of her farewell

came back to him, and running through it, that strong thread of faith in

him yet, making his life more worth living.

"Damned little in my present outfit for her to build any foundation for

hope on," he muttered grimly, as he saddled and bridled Mowitza, as if

in hot haste to be gone somewhere, and then sat down on the door-step as

if forgetful of the intention.

Talapa slipped past him with an armful of bark for the fire. Not a word

had passed between them since the night before, and the girl watched him

covertly from under drooped lids. Was she trying to fathom his

meditations, or determine how far they were to affect her own future?

For as the birds foretell by the signs in the air the change of the

summer, so Talapa, through the atmosphere of the cabin that morning,

felt approach the end of a season that had been to her luxurious with

comforts new to her; and though the Indian blood in her veins may have

disdained the adjuncts of civilization, yet the French tide that crossed

it carried to her the Gallic yearning for the dainties and delicacies of

life. To be sure, one would not find many of those in a backwoodsman's

cabin; but all content is comparative, and Talapa's basis of comparison

was the earthen floor of a thronged "tepee," or wigwam, where blows had

been more frequent than square meals; and being a thing feminine, her

affections turned to this white man of the woods who could give her a

floor of boards and a dinner-pot never empty, and moreover, being of the

sex feminine, those bonds of affection were no doubt securely

fastened--bonds welded in a circle--endless.

At least those attributes, vaguely remembered, are usually conceded to

the more gentle half of humanity, and I give Talapa the benefit of the

belief, as her portrait has been of necessity set in the shadows, and

has need of all the high lights that can be found for it. Whatever she

may have lacked from a high-church point of view, she had at least

enviable self-possession. Whatever tumult of wounded feeling there may

have been in this daughter of the forest, she moved around sedately,

with an air that in a white woman would be called martyr-like, and said

nothing.

It was as well, perhaps, that she had the rare gift of silence, for the

man at the door, with his chin resting grimly on his fists, did not seem

at all sympathetic, or in the humor to fit himself to anyone's moods.

The tones of that girl's voice were still vibrating over chords in his

nature that disturbed him. He did not even notice Talapa's movements

until she ceased them by squatting down with native grace by the

fire-place, and then--

"Get up off that!" he roared, in a voice that hastened Talapa's rising

considerably.

"That" was the buffalo-robe on which the other girl had throned herself

the night before; and what a picture she had made in the fire-light!

Genesee in two strides crossed the floor, and grabbing the robe, flung

it over his shoulder. No, it was not courteous to unseat a lady with so

little ceremony--it may not even have been natural to him, so many

things are not natural to us human things that are yet so true.

"And why so?" asked Talapa sullenly, her back against the wall as if in

a position to show fight; that is, she said "Pe-kah-ta?" but, for the

benefit of the civilized reader, the ordinary English is given--"And why

so?"

Genesee looked at her a moment from head to foot, but the scrutiny

resulted in silence--no remark. At length he walked back to the chest

against the wall, and unlocking it, drew out an account-book, between

the leaves of which were some money orders; two of them he took out,

putting the rest in his pocket. Then, writing a signature on those

two--not the name of Jack Genesee, by the way--he turned to Mistress

Talapa, who had slid from the wall down on the floor minus the

buffalo-robe.

"Here!" he said tersely. "I am going away. Klat-awah si-ah--do you

understand?" And then, fishing some silver out of his pocket, he handed

it to her with the notes. "Take these to the settlement--to the

bank-store. They'll give you money--money to live all winter. Live in

the cabin if you want; only get out in the spring--do you hear? I will

want it myself then--and I want it alone."

Without comment, Talapa reached up and took the money, looking curiously

at the notes, as if to decipher the meaning in the pictured paper, and

then:

"Nika wake tikegh Talapa?" she queried, but with nothing in her tone

to tell if she cared whether he wanted her or not.

"Not by a--" he began energetically, and then, "you are your own boss

now," he added, more quietly. "Go where you please, only you'd better

keep clear of the old gang, for I won't buy you from them

again--kumtuks?"

Talapa nodded that she understood, her eyes roving about the cabin,

possibly taking note of the wealth that she had until spring to revel in

or filch from.

Genesee noticed that mental reckoning.

"Leave these things alone," he said shortly. "Use them, but leave them

here. If any of them are gone when I get back--well, I'll go after

them."

And throwing the robe over his arm again, he strode out through the

door, mounted Mowitza, and rode away.

It was not a sentimental finale to an idyl of the wood, but by the time

the finale is reached, the average human specimen has no sentiment to

waste. Had they possessed any to begin with?

It was hard to tell whether Talapa was crushed by the cold cruelty of

that leave-taking, or whether she was indifferent; that very uncertainty

is a charm exerted over us by those conservative natures that lock

within themselves wrath or joy where we ordinary mortals give expression

to ours with all the language possessed by us, and occasionally borrow

some adjectives that would puzzle us to give a translation of.

Talapa sat where he left her, not moving except once to shy a pine knot

at a rat by the cupboard--and hit it, too, though she did belong to the

sex divine. So she sat, pensively dribbling the silver coin from hand to

hand, until the morning crept away and the sun shone through the mists.

What was it that at last awakened her from an apparent dreamland--the

note of that bird whistling in the forest in very gladness that the sun

shone again? Evidently so, and the Indian blood in her veins had taught

her the secret of sympathy with the wild things, for she gave an

answering call, half voice, half whistle. Silence for a little, and then

again from the timber came that quavering note, with the rising

inflection at the finish that was so near an interrogation.

It brought Talapa to her feet, and going to the door, she sent a short,

impatient call that a little later was answered by the appearance of a

comely buck--one of the order of red men--who lounged down the little

incline with his head thrust forward as if to scent danger if any was

about; but a few words from the girl assuring him that the coast was

clear--the fort unguarded--gave him more an air of assurance, as he

stepped across the threshhold and squatted down on the side of the bed.

"Genesee gone?" he queried in the musical medley of consonants.

Talapa grunted an assent, with love in her eyes for the noble specimen

on the bed.

"Gone far--gone all time--till spring," she communicated, as if sure of

being the giver of welcome news. "House all mine--everything mine--all

winter."

"Ugh!" was all the sound given in answer to the information; but the

wide mouth curved upward ever so slightly at the corners, and coupled

with the interrogative grunt, expressed, no doubt, as much content as

generally falls to the lot of individual humanity. One of his boots hurt

him, or rather the moccasins which he wore with leggings, and above them

old blue pantaloons and a red shirt; the moccasin was ripped, and

without ceremony he loosened it and kicked it toward Talapa.

"Mamook tipshin," he remarked briefly; and by that laconic order to

sew his moccasin, Skulking Brave virtually took possession of Genesee's

cabin and Genesee's squaw.

Through the gray shadows of that morning Rachel and Jim rode almost in

silence down the mountain trail. The memory of the girl was too busy for

speech, and the frequent yawns of Jim showed that a longer sleep would

have been appreciated by him.

"Say," he remarked at last, as the trail grew wide enough for them to

ride abreast, "everything was jolly back here at Mr. Jack's last night,

but I'm blest if it was this morning. The breakfast wasn't anything to

brag of, an' the fire was no good, an' the fog made the cabin as damp as

rain when the door was open, an' he was glum an' quiet, an' you wasn't

much better. Say, was it that Injun cook o' his you was afeared to eat

after?"

"Not exactly," she answered with a little laugh; "what an observer you

are, Jim! I suppose the atmosphere of the cabin was the effect of the

storm last night."

"What? Well, the storm wasn't much worse to plow through last night than

the wet timber this morning," he answered morosely; "but say, here's the

sun coming out at last--by George! How the wind lifts the fog when it

gets started. Look at it!" And then, as the sunlight really crept in a

great shimmer through the pines, he added: "It might just as well have

come earlier, or else kept away altogether, for we're as wet now as we

can get."

"Be thankful that it shines at all, Jim."

"Oh, the shine's all right, but it shines too late."

"Yes," agreed the girl, with a memory of shamed, despairing eyes

flitting through her brain. "Yes, it always shines too late--for

someone."

"It's for two of us this time," replied grumbling Jim, taking her speech

literally. "We've had a Nick of a time anyway this trip. Why that storm

had to wait until just the day we got lost, so as we'd get wet, an'

straggle home dead beat--an' without the sheep--I can't see."

"No, we can't see," said Rachel, with a queer little smile.

"Perhaps--perhaps it's all because this is the end instead of the

beginning of a cultus corrie."

PART THIRD

"PRINCE CHARLIE"

CHAPTER I.

IN THE KOOTENAI SPRING-TIME.

In the spring that followed, what a spirit of promise and enterprise was

abroad on the Hardy ranch! What multitudes of white lambs, uncertain in

the legs, staggered and tottered about the pasture lands! and what

musical rills of joy in the mountain streams escaping through the

sunshine from their prisons of ice! The flowers rose from the dead once

more--such a fragrant resurrection! slipping from out their damp coffins

and russet winding-sheets with dauntless heads erect, and eager lips

open to the breath of promise. Some herald must bear to their

earth-homes the tidings of how sweet the sun of May is--perhaps the snow

sprites who are melted into tears at his glances and slip out of sight

to send him a carpet of many colors instead of the spotless white his

looks had banished. It may be so, though only the theory of an alien.

And then the winged choruses of the air! What matinees they held in the

sylvan places among the white blossoms of the dogwood and the feathery

tassels of the river willow, all nodding, swaying in the soft kisses

sent by the Pacific from the southwest--soft relays of warmth and

moisture that moderate those western valleys until they are affronted by

the rocky wall that of old was called by the Indians the Chippewyan

Mountains, but which in our own day, in the more poetical language of

the usurper, has been improved upon and dubbed the "Rockies." But all

the commonplaces of those aliens can not deprive the inaccessible,

conservative solitudes of their wild charms. And after those long months

of repression, how warmly their smile bursts forth--and how contagious

it is!

Laugh though the world may at the vibrations of poet hearts echoing the

songs of the youngest of seasons, how can they help it? It is never the

empty vessel that brims over, and with the spring a sort of inspiration

is wakened in the most prosaic of us. The same spirit of change that

thrills the saplings with fresh vitality sends through human veins a

creeping ecstasy of new life. And all its insidious, penetrating charm

seemed abroad there in the Northern-land escaped from under the white

cloak of winter. The young grass, fresh from the valley rains, warmed

into emerald velvet in the sunshine, bordered and braced with yellow

buttons of dandelion; while the soil was turned over with the plows, and

field and garden stocked with seed for the harvest.

Energetic, busy days those were after the long months of semi-inaction;

even the horses were too mettlesome for farm drudgery--intoxicated, no

doubt, by the bracing, free winds that whispered of the few scattered

droves away off to the north that bore no harness and owned no master.

All things were rebellious at the long restraint, and were breaking into

new paths of life for the new season.

Even a hulking Siwash, with his squaw and children, came dragging down

the valley in the wake of the freshets, going to the Reservation south,

content to go any place where they could get regular meals, with but the

proviso to be "good Injun."

They loafed about the ranch two days, resting, and coming in for a share

of rations from the Hardy table; and the little barefooted "hostiles"

would stand about the gate and peer in around the posts of the porch,

saying in insinuating tones:

"Pale papoose?"

Yes, the spirit of the hills and grazing lands had crept under the

rafters and between the walls, and a new life had been given to the

world, just as the first violets crept sunward.

And of course no other life was ever quite so sweet, so altogether

priceless, as this little mite, who was already mistress of all she

surveyed; and Aunty Luce--their one female servant--declared:

"Them eyes o' hers certainly do see everything in reach of 'em. She's a

mighty peart chile, I'm tellin' ye."

Even Jim had taken to loafing around the house more than of old, and

showing a good deal of nervous irritation if by any chance "she" was

allowed to test her lungs in the slightest degree. The setter pups paled

into insignificance, and a dozen times a day he would remark to Ivans

that it was "the darndest, cutest, little customer he ever saw."

"Even you have become somewhat civilized, Rachel, since baby's arrival,"

remarked Tillie in commendation.

Yes, Rachel was still there. At the last moment, a few appealing glances

from Tillie and some persuasive words from Hen had settled the question,

and a rebellion was declared against taking the home trail, and all the

words of the Houghtons fell on barren soil, for she would not--and she

would not.

"They will never miss me back there in Kentucky," she argued; "there are

so many girls there. But out here, femininity is at a premium. Let me

alone, Clara; I may take the prize."

"And when am I to tell the folks you will come back?" asked Mrs.

Houghton, with the purpose of settling on a fixed time and then holding

her to it.

"Just tell them the truth, dear--say you don't know," answered the girl

sweetly. "I may locate a claim out here yet and develop into a

stock-grower. Do not look so sulky. I may be of use here; no one needs

me in Kentucky."

"What of Nard Stevens?" was a final query; at which Rachel no longer

smiled--she laughed.

"Oh, you silly Clara!" she burst out derisively. "You think yourself so

wise, and you never see an inch beyond that little nose of yours. Nard

needs me no more than I need him--bless the boy! He's a good fellow; but

you can not use him as a trump card in this game, my dear. Yes, I know

that speech is slangy. Give my love to Nard when you see him--well,

then, my kind regards and best wishes if the other term conflicts with

your proper spirit, and tell him I have located out here to grow up with

the country."

And through the months that followed she assuredly grew to the country

at all events; the comparative mildness of the winters proving a

complete surprise to her, as, hearing of the severe weather of the

North, she had not known that its greatest intensity extends only to the

eastern wall of the great mountain range, and once crossing the divide,

the Chinook winds or currents from the Pacific give the valleys much the

temperature of our Middle States, or even more mild, since the snow-fall

in the mountains is generally rain in the lowlands. Sometimes, of

course, with the quick changes that only the wind knows, there would

come a swoop downward of cold from the direct North, cutting through the

basins, and driving the Pacific air back coastward in a fury, and those

fitful gusts were to be guarded against by man and beast; and wise were

growing those eastern prophets in their quickness to judge from the

heavens whether storm or calm was to be with them.

But despite Clara's many predictions, the days did not grow dull to

Rachel, and the ranch was not a prison in winter-time. She had too

clearly developed the faculty of always making the best of her

surroundings and generally drawing out the best points in the people

about her.

It was that trait of hers that first awakened her interest in that

splendid animal, their guide from the Maple range.

He had disappeared--gone from the Kootenai country, so they told her.

But where? or for what? That none could answer.

Her memory sometimes brought her swift flushes of mortification when she

thought of him--of their association so pregnant with some sympathy or

subtle influence that had set the world so far beyond them at times. Now

that he was gone, and their knowledge of each other perhaps all over,

she tried to coolly reason it all out for herself, but found so much

that contained no reason--that had existed only through

impulses--impulses not easy to realize once outside the circle of their

attending circumstances.

Those memories puzzled her--her own weakness when she lay in his arms,

and her own gift of second-sight that gave her an understanding of him

that morning when she turned champion for him against himself.

Was it really an understanding of him? or was it only that old

habit of hers of discovering fine traits in characters voted

worthless?--discoveries laughed at by her friends, until her "spectacles

of imagination" were sometimes requested if some specimen of the genus

homo without any redeeming points was under discussion.

Was it so in this case? She had asked herself the question more than

once during the winter. And if she had been at all pliable in her

opinions, she would long ere spring have dropped back to the original

impression that the man was a magnificent animal with an intellect, and

with spirituality and morality sleeping.

But she was not. A certain stubbornness in her nature kept her from

being influenced, as the others were, by the knowledge that after all

they had had a veritable "squaw man" as a guide.

Hardy was surprised, and Tillie was inconsolable.

"I never will believe in an honest face again!" she protested.

"Nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "Pocahontas was an Indian and Rolfe was not

hustled out of society in consequence."

"N--No," assented Tillie, eyeing Rachel doubtfully "but then, you see

Rolfe married Pocahontas."

"Yes?"

"And--and Ivans told Hen he heard that the squaw you saw at Genesee's

was only a sort of slave. Did he tell you and Jim that she was his

wife?"

"I--I don't know;" and Rachel suddenly sat down on a chair near the

window and looked rather hopelessly at the questioner. "No, I don't

believe he said so, but the circumstances and all--well, I took it for

granted; he looked so ashamed."

"And you thought it was because of a marriage ceremony, not for the lack

of one?"

"Yes," acknowledged the girl, inwardly wondering why that view of the

question had not presented itself to her. Had she after all imagined

herself sighting an eagle, and was it on nearer acquaintance to develop

into a vulture--or, worse still, a buzzard--a thing reveling only in

carrion, and knowing itself too unclean to breathe the same air with the

untainted! So it seemed; so Tillie was convinced; so she knew Clara

would have thought. In fact, in all the range of her female

acquaintances she could think of none whose opinion would not have been

the same, and she had an impatient sort of wonder with herself for not

agreeing with them. But the memory of the man's face that morning, and

the echo of that "God bless you, girl!" always drifted her away from

utter unbelief in him.

She heard considerable about him that winter; that he was thought rather

eccentric, and belonged more to the Indians than the whites, sometimes

living with a tribe of Kootenais for weeks, sometimes disappearing, no

one knew where, for months, and then settling down in the cabin again

and placidly digging away at that hole in the hill by the little

lake--the hill itself called by the Indians "Tamahnous," meaning

bewitched, or haunted. And his persistence in that work was one of the

eccentric things that made some people say significantly:

"They allowed Genesee was a good man, but a little 'touched' on the

silver question."

And for Tillie's benefit Hen had to explain that the term "good" had

nothing whatever to do with the man's moral or spiritual worth; its use

was in a purely physical sense.

After the snows fell in the mountains there were but few strangers found

their way to the new ranch. Half locked in as it was by surrounding

hills, the passes were likely to be dangerous except to the initiated,

and there were not many who had business urgent enough to push them

through the drifts, or run their chances with land-slides. But if a

stray hunter did come their way, his call was not allowed to be a short

one. They had already become too thoroughly Western in their hospitality

to allow the quick departure of a guest, a trait of which they had

carried the germs from old Kentucky.

What cheery evenings there were in the great sitting-room, with the logs

heaped high in the stone fire-place! An uncarpeted room, with long,

cushioned settees along two sides of it--and mighty restful they were

voted by the loungers after the day's work; a few pictures on the wall,

mostly engravings; the only color given the furnishing was in the pink

and maroon chintz curtains at the windows, or cushions to the oak

chairs. There in the fire-light of the long evenings were cards played,

or stories told, or magazines read aloud, Rachel and Hen generally

taking turn about as reader. And Tillie in the depths of the cushioned

rocker, knitting soft wool stuffs, was a chatelaine, the picture of

serene content, with close beside her a foil in the form of black Aunty

Luce, whom only devotion to her young miss would ever have tempted into

those wilds; and after the work was over for the night, it was a usual

thing to see her slipping in and snuggling down quietly to listen to the

stories told or read, her big eyes glancing fearfully toward windows or

doors if the Indian question was ever touched on; though occasionally,

if approached with due ceremony and full faith shown in her knowledge,

she would herself add her share to the stories told, her donation

consisting principally of sure "hoodoos," and the doings of black

witches and warlocks in the land of bayous; for Aunty Luce had

originally come from the swamps of Louisiana, where the native religion

and superstitions have still a good following. And old Aunty's

reminiscences added to the variety of their evening's bill of

entertainment.

A mail-carrier unexpectedly sprang up for them in the winter in the

person of a young half-breed called Kalitan, or the Arrow. He had

another name, his father, an Englishman, and agent for a fur company,

had happened to be around when his swarthy offspring was ushered into

the world, and he promptly bestowed on him his own name of Thomas

Alexander. But it was all he did bestow on him--and that only by

courtesy, not legality; and Alexander Junior had not even the pleasure

of remembering his father's face, as his mother was soon deserted. She

went back to her tribe and reared her son as an Indian, even his name in

time was forgotten, as by common consent the more characteristic one of

Kalitan was given him because of the swiftness of foot that had placed

him among the best "runners" or messengers in the Indian country--and

the average speed of a runner will on a long march out-distance that of

cavalry. At the military post at Fort Missoula, Kalitan's lines had

first fallen among those of Genesee, and for some unexplained reason his

adherence to that individual became as devoted as Mowitza's own. For a

long time they had not ranged far apart, Genesee seldom leaving the

Kootenai country that Kalitan did not disappear as well. This last trip

his occupation was gone, for word had been left with MacDougall that the

trail was not clear ahead, but if Kalitan was wanted he would be sent

for, and that sinewy, bronze personage did not seem to think of doing

other than wait--and the waiting promised to be long.

He took to hanging around Scot's Mountain more than of old, with the

query, "Maybe Genesee send lettah--s'pose? I go see."

And go he would, over and over again, always with a philosophic "S'pose

next time," when he returned empty-handed. Sometimes he stopped at the

ranch, and Rachel at once recognized him as the youth who had brought

her the black bear skin months before, and pretended at the time utter

ignorance of Chinook. He would speak Chinook fast enough to her now if

there was any occasion, his white blood, and the idea that she was

Genesee's friend, inclining him to sociability seldom known to the

aristocratic conservatives of the Indian race.

The nearest mail station was twenty miles south, and it was quite an

item to find a messenger as willing as was Kalitan; storm or calm, he

would make the trip just the same, carrying his slip of paper on which

all the names were written and which he presented as an order to the

postmaster. A big mail was a cause of pride to him, especially magazines

or packages. Letters he did not think of much account, because of their

size.

To Aunty Luce he was a thing of dread, as were all of his race. She was

firmly convinced that the dusky well-featured face belonged to an imp of

the evil one, and that he simply slid over the hills on the cold winds,

without even the aid of a broom-stick. The nights that he spent at the

ranch found Aunty's ebony face closer than ever to the side of Mistress

Tillie's chair.

Another member had been added to the visiting list at Hardy's, and that

was the sovereign of Scot's Mountain.

Along in midwinter, Kalitan brought a scrawled note from "Ole Man Mac,"

asking for some drugs of which he stood in need. The request brought to

light the fact that Kalitan one day while paying visits had found "Ole

Man Mac" sick in bed--"heap sick--crank--no swallow medicine but white

man's."

The required white man's medicine was sent, and with it a basket with

white bread, fresh butter, and various condiments of home manufacture

that Tillie's kindly heart prompted her to send to the old trapper--one

of their nearest neighbors.

The following day Rachel and her henchman Jim started on Kalitan's

trail, with the idea of learning personally if any further aid that the

ranch could give was needed at the cabin. A snow three days old covered

the ground, in which Kalitan's trail was easily followed; and then

Rachel had been over the same route before, starting light-hearted and

eager, on that cultus corrie.

They reached Scot's Mountain a little after noon, and found its

grizzled, unshaven owner much better than he had been the day before,

and close beside him on the pillow lay his one companion, the cat.

"Well, well! to think o' this!" said the old man, reaching a brawny hand

to her from the bunk. "You're the first white woman as ever passed that

door-post, and it's rare and glad I am that it's your own self."

"Why myself more than another?" she asked, rather surprised at his

words. "I would have come long ago if I had known I was wanted, or that

you even knew of me."

"Have I not, then?" he queried, looking at her sharply from under his

wrinkled, half-closed lids. "But sit ye down, lady. Kalitan, bring the

chair. And is that a brother--the lad there? I thought I had na heard of

one. Sit you down close that I can see ye--a sight good for sore een;

an' I have no heard o' ye? Ah, but I have, though. Many's the hour the

lad has lain lazy like on the cot here, an' told me o' the gay folk frae

the East. Ye know I'd be a bit curious o' my new neighbors, an' would be

askin' many's the question, an' all the tales would end wi' something

about the lass that was ay the blithe rider, an' ever the giver o' good

judgment."

The girl felt her face grow hot under those sharp old eyes. She scarcely

knew what to say, and yet could give no sensible reason for such

embarrassment; and then--

"The lad--what lad?" she asked at last.

"Oh--ay. I clean forgot he is no lad to you. Kalitan, will ye be

building up that fire a bit? When we have quality to visit we must give

them a warm welcome, if no more. An' the lad, as I was sayin'," he

continued, "was but Genesee--no other; though he looked more the lad

when I called him so first."

"You are such old friends, then?"

"No so old as so close, ye might say. It's a matter o' five year now

since he come up in these hills wi' some men who were prospectin', an'

one an' another got tired and dropped down the country again till only

Genesee was left. He struck that haunted hill in the Maple range that

they all said was of no good, an' he would na leave it. There he stuck

in very stubbornness, bewitched like by it; an' the day before his

flittin' in the fall found him clear through the hill, helped a bit by

striking into an old mine that nobody knew aught of. Think o' that!--dug

into a mine that had been abandoned by the Indians generations ago, most

like."

"I did not know that the Indians ever paid attention to mining. They

seem to know no use for gold or silver until the white men teach them

it."

"True enough; but there the old mine stands, as a clear showin' that

some o' the heathen, at some time, did mine in that range; an' the stone

mallets an' such like that he stumbled on there shows that the cave was

not the result o' accident."

"And has he at last given it up as hopeless?"

"That's as time may happen to tell," answered the old man sagely; "an'

old Daddy Time his own self could na keep his teeth shut more tight than

can Genesee if there's a bit secret to hold. But o' the old mine he said

little when he was takin' the trail, only, 'It has kept these thousand

o' years, Davy--it will most like keep until I get back.'"

From that speech Rachel gathered the first intimation that Genesee's

absence from the Kootenai country was only a transient one. Was he then

to come back and again drop his life into its old lines? She did not

like to think of it--or to question. But that winter visit to "Ole Man

Mac," as Kalitan called him, was the beginning of an avowed friendship

between the old hermit of the northern hills and the young girl from the

southern ones.

Her independent, curious spirit and youthful vitality were a sort of

tonic to him, and as he grew better he accepted her invitation to visit

the ranch, and from that time on the grizzled head and still athletic

frame of the old fellow were not strange to the Hardy household. He was

there as often as was consistent with the weather in the hills and

almost seventy years of braving their hardships; for of late years

MacDougall did not range widely. His traps could find too many nooks

near home for mink, lynx, and the black bear, and from the Kootenai

tribes on the north he bought pelts, acting the trader as well as

trapper; and twice a year making a trip to a settlement to dispose of

his wares, with horses from his Indian neighbors to transport them with.

Rachel learned that for forty years he had followed that isolated

life--moving steadily farther west or farther north as the grip of

civilization made itself felt behind him; and he felt himself crowded if

a settler's prairie schooner was sighted within twenty-five miles of

him. The girl wondered, often, the cause of that self-exile, but no word

or sign gave her any clew. He had come from the eastern highlands of

Scotland when less than thirty years old, and had struck out at once for

the extreme borders of civilization in America; and there he had

remained--always on the borders--never quite overtaken.

"It will be but a few more stands I can make," he would say to her

sometimes. "Time is little content to be a laggard, and he is running me

close in a race he has na' a doubt of winning."

With advancing years, the barrier, whatever the foundation, that he had

raised between himself and the world was evidently weakening somewhat;

and first through Genesee, and now through this girl, had come a growing

desire for intercourse with his own race once more. And much teasing did

the girl get in consequence of the visits that by the family in general

were conceded to belong to Rachel in particular, teasing, however, which

she bore with indifference, openly claiming that the stronger interest

was on her side, and if he forgot his visits she would certainly go

herself to Scot's Mountain to learn the why and wherefore. This she did

more than once, through the season, when indoor life grew at all

monotonous; sometimes with Jim as a companion, and sometimes with

Kalitan trotting at her mare's head, and guiding very carefully Betty's

feet over the dangerous places--Aunty Luce always watching such a

departure with prophecies of "Miss Rache's sea'p a-hangin' round the

neck o' that red nigger some o' these days, I'm a-tellin' yeh!"

Despite prophecies, Kalitan proved a most eager and careful guardian,

seeming to feel rather proud when he was allowed to be her sole

companion.

Sometimes he would say: "S'pose you hear where Genesee is--may be?" and

at her negative he, like a philosopher of unlimited patience, would

content himself with: "Sometime he sure come; s'pose waum

illihie"--waum illihie meaning the summer-time; and Rachel, noting

his faithfulness to that one idea, wondered how many seasons his

patience would endure.

At last, about the middle of April, he stalked into the ranch door one

morning early, scaring Aunty Luce out of her seven senses, or as many

extra ones as she laid claim to.

"Rashell Hardy?" was all he deigned to address to that personage, so

inborn in the Indian is the scorn of a slave or those of slavish origin.

And Kalitan, who had lived almost entirely with his tribe, had many of

the aristocratic ideas of race that so soon degenerate in the Indian of

the settlements or haunts of the white man. Once Aunty Luce, not

understanding his ideas of caste, thought to propitiate him with some

kindly social inquiry as to the state of his health and well-being, and

had beat an ignominious retreat to the floor above at the black look of

indignation on his face at being questioned by a slave. When Rachel took

him to task for such a ferocious manner, he answered, with a sullen sort

of pride: "I, Kalitan, am of a race of chiefs--not a dog to be bidden by

black blood;" and she had noticed then, and at other times, that any

strong emotion, especially anger, gave an elevated tone and manner of

speech to him and his race, lifting it out of the slurred commonplaces

of the mongrel jargon--a direct contradiction of their white brother, on

whom anger generally has an effect exactly contrary. After that one

venture of Aunty's at timorous friendliness, she might have been a dumb

woman so far as Kalitan ever had further knowledge; for her

conversations in his presence were from that date carried on entirely in

pantomime, often to the annoyance, though always to the amusement, of

the family.

Kalitan's abrupt entrance and query that April morning was answered by a

comprehensive nod and wave of pudgy black hands toward the sitting-room,

into which he walked without knocking--that, also perhaps, being deemed

a prerogative of his lordly race.

"Why, Kalitan, so early!" said Rachel in surprise. "Are you trying to

outrun the sun? What is it?" For her eyes, accustomed to the usual calm

of his countenance, recognized at once that some new current of emotion

was struggling for supremacy in him that morning. He did not answer at

once, but seated himself in impressive silence on the edge of one of the

settees, and after a dramatic pause that he considered a fitting prelude

to the importance of his communication, he addressed himself to

Rachel--the only woman, by the way, whom he was ever known to meet or

converse with on terms of equality, as Indian chivalry does not extend

to their exaltation of the gentler sex.

"Rashell Hardy," he said, in a mingling of English and Chinook, "I,

Kalitan, the Arrow, shoot to the south. Genesee has sent in the

talking-paper to Ole Man Mac that the Reservation Indians south have dug

up the hatchet. Genesee is taking the trail from the fort, with rifle

and many men, and he wants an arrow that can shoot out of sight of any

other; so he wants Kalitan."

And having delivered himself of this modest encomium on his own worth,

there was a stage-wait of about a minute, that might have been relieved

by some words conceding his superiority, but wasn't. Rachel was looking

out of the window as if in momentary forgetfulness of the honor done her

in this statement of facts. Kalitan rose to his feet.

"Ole Man Mac come town valley, may be, in two days. I stop to tell you,

and say like white man, klahowya."

And with the Indian word of farewell, he turned to the door, when Rachel

stopped him.

"Wait, Kalitan," she said, holding out her hand to stop him. "You are

going south into the hostile country. Will the Arrow carry a message as

it flies?"

"Let Rashell Hardy speak. Kalitan is swift. A message is not heavy from

a friend."

"That is it, Kalitan; it is to your friend--Genesee."

"Rachel!" ejaculated Tillie, who had been a silent auditor of this queer

little scene, with its ceremony and its ludicrous features--ludicrous to

any not knowing the red man's weakness for forms and a certain pomposity

that seems a childish love of display and praise. But Rachel never

ridiculed it; instead, she simply let herself drop into his tone, and

thus enhanced very much his opinion of her. And at Tillie's voice she

turned impatiently.

"Well, why not?" she asked; and her combative air at once reduced Tillie

to withdrawing as easily as she could from the discussion.

"But, dear, the man's reputation! and really you know he is nothing we

thought he was. He is scarcely fit for any lady to speak to. It is

better to leave such characters alone. One never can tell how far they

may presume on even recognition."

"Yes? After all, Tillie, I believe you are very much of the world

worldly. Did he stop to ask if I was entirely a proper sort of person

before he started to hunt for me that time in the Kootenai hills?"

"Nonsense! Of course not. But the cases are totally unlike."

"Naturally. He is a man; I am a woman. But if the cases were reversed,

though I might preserve a better reputation, I doubt much if, in some

respects, I should equal the stubborn strength of character I have seen

that man show at times."

"Oh, I might have known better than to advise you, Rachel, if I wanted

to influence you," remarked Tillie helplessly. "You are like an

Irishman, always spoiling for a fight, and hunt up the most ridiculous,

impossible theories to substantiate your views; but I am so disappointed

in that man--he seemed such a fine fellow. But when we are assured of

our mistake, it is time, especially, Rachel, for a girl to drop all

acquaintance with him."

"I wish I was not a girl. Then I would not have to be hedged in forever.

You would not think it so terrible if Hen or Ivans, or any of the men,

were to meet him as usual or send word to him if they chose."

"But that is different."

"And I am sick of the differences. The more I see the narrowness of

social views, the less I wonder at old MacDougall and Genesee taking to

the mountains, where at least the life, even the life's immoralities,

are primitive."

"Primitive! Oh, good Lord!" ejaculated Tillie in serio-comic despair.

"What would you suggest as an improvement on their simplicity?"

And then, both being rather good-natured women, the absurdity of their

vehemence seemed to strike them, and looking at each other for a second,

they both burst out laughing.

All this time Kalitan stood, showing his silent disdain of this squaw

"wau-wau" with the impassive gaze that went straight over their heads

at the opposite wall, not seeing the debaters, as if it were beneath his

dignity to open his ears to their words. In fact, his dignity had been

enhanced several degrees since his visit to the ranch, some ten days

before--all because of that "talking-paper," no doubt, that had come

from the Fort, and his full Indian dress--for he would scorn to wear the

garb of his father--was decked with several additional trinkets,

borrowed or stolen from the tribe, that were likely to render his

appearance more impressive.

And Rachel, glancing at him, was reminded by that manner of dignified

toleration that she had kept him waiting no doubt five minutes--and five

minutes in the flight of an arrow is a life-time.

"Tell Jack Genesee," she said, turning to him in complete negligence of

arguments just used, "that Rachel Hardy sends to him greetings--you

understand? That she is glad to hear where he is; a soldier's life is a

good one for him, and she will always have faith in his fighting well,

and trying to fight on the right side. Is that message much to

remember?"

Kalitan poetically answered in Chinook to the effect that his heart was

in his ears when she spoke, and would be in his tongue when he met

Genesee, and with that startling statement he made his exit, watched by

Aunty Luce from the stairs on which she had taken refuge.

"You are a queer girl, Rache," said Tillie as Rachel stood watching the

gaily-decked, sinewy form as it broke into a sort of steady trot, once

outside the gate, and was so quickly out of sight down the valley.

"Am I? Try and say something more original," she suggested.

"I believe you would make a good missionary," continued Tillie

debatably. "Your theory of civilizing people seems to be all right; but

while it may work capitally with those savages born in heathendom, I

fear its results when applied to enlightened mortals who have preferred

dropping into degraded lives. Your laudable energy is likely to be

wasted on that sort of material."

"What a learned diagnosis for you to make, my child," said Miss Hardy

approvingly. "Aunty Luce confided to me she was going to make a 'batch'

of sugar cookies this morning, and you shall have the very first one as

a reward for delivering your little speech so nicely."