AT CROSS-PURPOSES.
"Their tricks and craft ha' put me daft,
They've taen me in, and a' that."
"And so you got back unharmed from the midst of the hostiles?" asked
Rachel in mock surprise, when, a week later, Hardy, Stuart, and
MacDougall returned from their pilgrimage, bringing with them specimens
of deer they had sighted on their return.
"Hostiles is about the last name to apply to them, I should imagine,"
remarked Stuart; "they are as peaceable as sheep."
"But they can fight, too," said MacDougall, "an' used to be reckoned
hard customers to meet; but the Blackfeet ha' well-nigh been the finish
o' them. The last o' their war-chiefs is an old, old man now, an'
there's small chance that any other will ever walk in his moccasins."
"I've been told something of the man's character," said Rachel, "but
have forgotten his name--Bald Eagle?"
"Grey Eagle. An' there's more character in him worth the tellin' of than
you'll find in any Siwash in these parts. I doubt na Genesee told you
tales o' him. He took a rare, strange liking to Genesee from the
first--made him some presents, an' went through a bit o' ceremony by
which they adopt a warrior."
"Was this Genesee of another tribe?" asked Stuart, who was always
attentive to any information of the natives.
"Yes," said Rachel quickly, anticipating the others, "of a totally
different tribe--one of the most extensive in America at present."
"A youth? A half-breed?"
"No," she replied; "an older man than you, and of pure blood. Hen, there
is Miss Margaret pummeling the window for you to notice her. Davy
MacDougall, did you bring me nothing at all as a relic of your trip?
Well, I must say times are changing when you forget me for an entire
week."
Both the men looked a little amused at Rachel's truthful yet misleading
replies, and thinking it just one of her freaks, did not interfere,
though it was curious to them both that Stuart, living among them so
many days, had not heard Genesee mentioned before. But no late news
coming from the southern posts, had made the conversations of their
troops flag somewhat; while Stuart, coming into their circle, brought
new interests, new topics, that had for the while superseded the old,
and Genesee's absence of a year had made them count him no longer as a
neighbor. Then it may be that, ere this, Rachel had warded off attention
from the subject. She scarcely could explain to herself why she did
it--it was an instinctive impulse in the beginning; and sometimes she
laughed at herself for the folly of it.
"Never mind," she would reassure herself by saying, "even if I am wrong,
I harm no one with the fancy; and I have just enough curiosity to make
me wonder what that man's real business is in these wilds, for he is not
nearly so careless as his manner, and not nearly so light-hearted as his
laugh."
"Well, did you find any white men among the Kootenais?" she asked him
abruptly, the day of his return.
His head, bent that Miss Margaret could amuse herself with it, as a toy
of immense interest, raised suddenly. Much in the girl's tone and manner
to him was at times suggestive; this was one of the times. His usually
pale face was flushed from his position, and his rumpled hair gave him a
totally different appearance as he turned on her a look half-compelling
in its direct regard.
"What made you ask that?" he demanded, in a tone that matched the eyes.
She laughed; to see him throw off his guard of gracious suavity was
victory enough for one day.
"My feminine curiosity prompted the question," she replied easily. "Did
you?"
"No," he returned, after a rather steady look at her; "none that you
could call men."
"A specimen, then?"
"Heaven help the race, if the one I saw was accepted as a specimen," he
answered fervently; "a filthy, unkempt individual, living on the
outskirts of the village, and much more degraded than any Indian I met;
but he had a squaw wife."
"Yes, the most of them have--wives or slaves."
"Slaves?" he asked incredulously.
"Actually slaves, though they do not bring the high prices we used to
ask for those of darker skin in the South. Emancipation has not made
much progress up here. It is too much an unknown corner as yet."
"Is it those of inferior tribes that are bartered, or prisoners taken in
battle?"
"No, I believe not, necessarily," she replied, "though I suppose such a
windfall would be welcomed; but if there happens to be any superfluous
members in a family, it is a profitable way to dispose of them, among
some of the Columbia Basin Indians, anyway. Davy MacDougall can give you
more information than I, as most of my knowledge is second-hand. But I
believe this tribe of the Kootenais is a grade above that sort of
traffic--I mean bartering their own kindred."
"How long have you been out here, Miss Rachel?" he asked, as abruptly as
she had questioned him of the white men.
"About a year--a little over."
"And you like it?"
"Yes; I like it."
In response to several demands, he had enthroned Miss Margaret on his
lap by this time; and even there she was not contented. His head seemed
to have a special fascination for her babyship; and she had such an
insinuating way of snuggling upward that she was soon close in his arms,
her hands in easy reach of his hair, which she did not pull in infantile
fashion, but dallied with, and patted caressingly. There was no
mistaking the fact that Stuart was prime favorite here at all events;
and the affection was not one-sided by any means--unless the man was a
thorough actor. His touch, his voice even, acquired a caressing way when
Miss Margaret was to be pleased or appeased. Rachel, speaking to Tillie
of it, wondered if his attraction was to children in general or to this
one in particular; and holding the baby so that her soft, pink cheek was
against his own, he seemed ruminating over the girl's replies, and after
a little--
"Yes, you must, of course," he said thoughtfully; "else you could never
make yourself seem so much a part of it as you do."
During the interval of silence the girl's thoughts had been wandering.
She had lost the slight thread of their former topic, and looked a
little at sea.
"A part of what?" she asked.
"Why, the life here. You seem as if you had always belonged to it--a bit
of local color in harmony with the scenes about us."
"How flattering!--charmingly expressed!" murmered Miss Hardy derisively.
"A bit of local color? Then, according to Mr. Stuart's impressions I may
look forward to finding myself catalogued among greasy squaws and
picturesque squaw men."
"You seem to take a great deal of delight in turning all I say or do
into ridicule," he observed. "You do it on the principle of the country
that guys a 'tenderfoot'; and that is just one of the things that stamp
you as belonging to the life here. I try to think of you as a Kentucky
girl transplanted, but even the fancy eludes me. You impress one as
belonging to this soil, and more than that, showing a disposition to
freeze out new-comers."
"I haven't frozen you out."
"No--thanks to my temperament that refuses to congeal. I did not leave
all my warmth in the South."
"Meaning that I did?"
"Meaning that you, for some reason, appear to have done so."
"Dear me, what a subtle personage you make of me! Come here, Margaret;
this analyst is likely to prejudice you against your only auntie."
"Let her be with me," he said softly, as the baby's big blue eyes turned
toward Rachel, and then were screened by heavy, white lids; "she is
almost asleep--little darling. Is she not a picture? See how she clings
to my finger--so tightly;" and then he dropped his face until his lips
touched the soft cheek. "It is a child to thank God for," he said
lovingly.
The girl looked at him, surprised at the thrill of feeling in his tones.
"You spoke like a woman just then," she said, her own voice changed
slightly; "like a--a mother--a parent."
"Did I?" he asked, and arose with the child in his arms to deliver it to
Aunty Luce. "Perhaps I felt so; is that weakness an added cause for
trying to bar me out from the Kootenai hills?"
But he walked away without giving her a chance to reply.
She saw nothing more of him until evening, and then he was rather quiet,
sitting beside Tillie and Miss Margaret, with occasional low-toned
remarks to them, but not joining in the general conversation.
"What a queer remark that was for a man to make!" thought Rachel,
looking at him across the room;--"a young man especially"; and that
started her to thinking of his age, about which people would have widely
different opinions. To see him sometimes, laughing and joking with the
rest, he looked a boy of twenty. To hear him talking of scientific
researches in his own profession and others, of the politics of the day,
or literature of the age, one would imagine him at least forty. But
sitting quietly, his face in repose, yet looking tired, his eyes so full
of life, yet steeped in reveries, the rare mouth relaxed, unsmiling,
then he looked what he probably was, thought the girl--about thirty; but
it was seldom that he looked like that.
"Therefore," reasoned this feminine watcher, "it is seldom that we see
him as he really is; query--why?"
"Perhaps I felt as a parent feels!" How frank his words had been, and
how unlike most men he was, to give utterance to that thought with so
much feeling, and how caressing to the child! Rachel had to acknowledge
that he was original in many ways, and the ways were generally charming.
His affections were so warm, so frankly bestowed; yet that gracious,
tender manner of his, even when compared with the bluntness of the men
around him, never made him seem effeminate.
Rachel, thinking of his words, wondered if he had a sweetheart
somewhere, that made him think of a possible wife or children
longingly--and if so, how that girl must love him!
So, despite her semi-warlike attitude, and her delight in thwarting him,
she had appreciation enough of his personality to understand how
possible it was for him to be loved deeply.
Jim, under Miss Hardy's tuition, had been making an attempt to "rope in"
an education, and that night was reading doubtfully the history of our
Glorious Republic in its early days; garnishing the statements now and
then with opinions of his own, especially the part relating to the
character of the original lords of the soil.
"Say, Miss Rache, yer given' me a straight tip on this lay-out?" he said
at last, shutting the book and eyeing her closely.
The question aroused her from the contemplation of the Hermes-like head
opposite, though she had, like Hardy, been pretending to read.
"Do you mean, is it true?" she asked.
"Naw!" answered Jim, with the intonation of supreme disgust; "I hain't
no call to ask that; but what I'm curious about is whether the galoot as
wrote the truck lied by accident--someone sort o' playin' it on him, ye
see--er whether he thought the rest o' creation was chumps from away
back, an' he just naturally laid himself out to sell them cheap--now
say, which is it?"
In vain his monitor tried to impress on his mind the truth of the
chronicles, and the fact that generations ago the Indian could be truly
called a noble man, until his child-like faith in the straight tongue of
the interloper had made a net for his feet, to escape which they had
recourse only to treachery and the tomahawk, thus carving in history a
character that in the beginning was not his, but one into which he was
educated by the godly people who came with their churches and guns,
their religion and whisky, to civilize the credulous people of the
forests.
Jim listened, but in the supercilious disbelief in his eyes Rachel read
the truth. In trying to establish historical facts for his benefit, she
was simply losing ground in his estimation at every statement made.
"An' you," he finally remarked, after listening in wonderful silence for
him--"an' you've read it all, then?"
"Yes, most of it."
"An' swallowed it as gospel?"
"Well, not exactly such literal belief as that; but I have read not only
this history, but others in support of those facts."
"Ye have, have yeh?" remarked her pupil, with a sarcastic contempt for
her book-learning. "Well, I allow this one will do me a life-time, fer
I've seen Flatheads, an' Diggers, an' Snakes!"
Thus ended the first lesson in history.
"Don't you think," said Tillie softly to Stuart, "that Rachel would win
more glory as a missionary to the Indians than among her own race? She
is always running against stumbling-blocks of past knowledge with the
progressive white man."
Rachel cast one silencing glance at the speaker; Tillie laughed.
"Never mind," she said reassuringly; "I will say nothing about your
other attempt, and I only hope you will be willing to confine yourself
to the Indians near home, and not start out to see some Flatheads, and
Diggers, and Snakes for yourself."
"Lawd bress yeh, honey!" spoke up Aunty Luce, whose ears were always
open to anything concerning their red neighbors; "don' yo' go to puttin'
no sech thoughts in her haid. Miss Rache needs tamin' down, she do,
'stead o' 'couragement."
"Well, it's precious little encouragement I get here, except to grow
rusty in everything," complained Rachel. "A crusade against even the
Diggers would be a break in the monotony. I wish I had gone with you to
the Kootenai village, Mr. Stuart; that would have been a diversion."
"But rather rough riding," he added; "and much of the life, and--well,
there is a great deal one would not care to take a lady to see."
"You don't know how Rachel rides," said Tillie, with a note of praise in
her voice; "she rides as hard as the men on the ranch. You must go
together for a ride, some day. She knows the country very well already."
Rachel was thinking of the other part of his speech.
"I should not have asked to be taken," she said, "but would have gone on
my own independence, as one of the party."
"Then your independence would have led you to several sights revolting
to a refined nature," he said seriously, "and you would have wished
yourself well out of it."
"Well, the Kootenais are several degrees superior to other tribes of the
Columbia Basin; so you had better fight shy of Jim's knowledge. Why,"
she added, with a little burst of indignation that their good points
were so neglected, "the Kootenais are a self-supporting people, asking
nothing of the Government. They are independent traders."
"Say, Miss Rachel," broke in Jim, "was Kalitan a Kootenai Injun?"
"No, though he lived with them often. He was of the Gros Ventres, a race
that belongs to the plains rather than the hills."
"You are already pretty well posted about the different tribes,"
observed Stuart.
"Yes, the Lawd knows--humph!" grunted Aunty Luce, evidently thinking the
knowledge not a thing to be proud of.
"Oh, yes," smiled Tillie, "Rachel takes easily to everything in these
hills. You should hear her talking Chinook to a blanket brave, or
exchanging compliments with her special friend, the Arrow."
"The Arrow? That is a much more suggestive title than the Wahoosh,
Kah-kwa, Sipah, and some other equally meaningless names I jotted down
as I heard them up there."
"They are only meaningless to strangers," answered the girl. "They all
have their own significance."
"Why, this same Arrow is called Kalitan," broke in Jim; "an' what'd you
make out of that? Both names mean just the same thing. He was called
that even when he was a little fellow, he said, 'cause he could run like
a streak. Why, he used to make the trip down to the settlement an' be
back here with the mail afore supper, makin' his forty miles afoot after
breakfast; how's that for movin' over rough country?"
The swiftness did not seem to make the desired impression, his listener
catching, instead, at the fact of their having had an Indian
mail-carrier.
"And where is your Indian messenger of late?" he asked. "He has not
visited you since my arrival, has he?"
"No; he left this country months ago," said Rachel. "Kalitan is a bit of
a wanderer--never long in one place."
"Davy MacDougall says he'd allus loaf around here if Genesee would, but
he's sure to go trottin' after Genesee soon as he takes a trail."
"That is the Indian you spoke of this morning, is it not?" asked Stuart,
looking at Rachel.
"What!" roared Jim; and Hardy, who was taking a nap behind a paper,
awoke with a start. "Genesee an Injun! Well, that's good!" and he broke
into shrill, boyish laughter. "Well, you ought to just say it to his
face, that's all!"
"Is he not?" he asked, still looking at the girl, who did not answer.
"Oh, no," said Tillie; "he is a white man, a--a--well, he has lived with
the Indians, I believe."
"I understood you to say he himself was an Indian." And Rachel felt the
steady regard of those warm eyes, while she tried to look unconscious,
and knew she was failing.
Hardy laughed, and shook himself rightly awake.
"Beg your pardon," he said, coming to the rescue, "but she didn't say
so; she only gave you the information that he was pure-blooded; and I
should say he is--as much of a white man as you or I."
"Mine was the mistake," acknowledged Stuart, with his old easy manner
once more; "but Miss Rachel's love of a joke did not let me fall into it
without a leader. And may I ask who he is, this white man with the
Indian name--what is he?"
Rachel answered him then brusquely: "You saw a white man with the
Kootenais, did you not--one who lives as they do, with a squaw wife, or
slave? You described the specimen as more degraded than the Indians
about him. Well, Genesee is one of the class to which that man
belongs--a squaw man; and he is also an Indian by adoption. Do you think
you would care for a closer acquaintance?"
Tillie opened her eyes wide at this sweeping denunciation of Genesee and
his life, while even Hardy looked surprised; Rachel had always, before,
something to say in his favor. But the man she questioned so curtly was
the only one who did not change even expression. He evidently forgot to
answer, but sat there looking at her, with a little smile in his eyes.
Once in bed, it did not keep her awake; and the gray morning crept in
ere she opened her eyes, earlier than usual, and from a cause not
usual--the sound in the yard of a man's voice singing snatches of song,
ignoring the words sometimes, but continuing the air in low carols of
music, such as speak so plainly of a glad heart. It was not yet sun-up,
and she rebelled, drowsily, at the racket as she rolled over toward the
window and looked out. There he was, tinkering at something about his
saddle, now and then whistling in mimicry of a bird swaying on a
leafless reed in the garden. She could see the other men, out across the
open space by the barn, moving around as usual, looking after the
domestic stock; but until one has had a breakfast, no well-regulated
individual is hilarious or demonstrative, and their movements, as she
could see, were not marvels of fast locomotion. They looked as she felt,
she thought, yawningly, and groped around for her shoes, and finding
them, sat down on the side of the bed again and looked out at that
musical worker in the yard.
She could hear Aunty Luce tinkling the dishes in the kitchen, and Tillie
and Miss Margaret, in the next room, cooing over some love-story of dawn
they were telling each other. All seemed drowsy and far off, except that
penetrating, cheery voice outside.
"The de'il tak' him!" she growled, quoting MacDougall; "what does the
fellow mean by shouting like that this time of the night? He is as much
of a boy as Jim."
"Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie.
Here awa', there awa', haud awa', hame!"
warbled the Stuart, with an accent that suited his name; and the girl
wakened up a bit to the remembrance of the old song, thinking, as she
dressed, that, social and cheery as he often was, this was the first
time she had ever heard him sing; and what a resonant, yet boyish,
timbre thrilled through his voice. She threw up the window.
"Look here!" she said, with mock asperity, "we are willing to make some
allowance for national enthusiasm, Mr. Charles, Prince of the Stuarts,
but we rebel at Scotch love-songs shouted under our windows before
daybreak."
"All right," he smiled, amiably. "I know one or two Irish ones, if you
prefer them.
"Oh, acushla Mavourneen! won't you marry me?
Gramachree, Mavourneen; oh, won't you marry me?"
Click! went the window shut again, and from the inside she saw him
looking up at the casement with eyes full of triumph and mischief. He
was metamorphosed in some way. Yesterday he had been serious and
earnest, returning from his hill trip with something like despondency,
and now--
She remembered her last sight of him the night before, as he smiled at
her from the stairway. Ah, yes, yes! all just because he had felt
jubilant over outwitting her, or rather over seeing a chance do the work
for another. Was it for that he was still singing? Had her instincts
then told her truly when she had connected his presence with the memory
of that older man's sombre eyes and dogged exile? Well, the exile was
his own business, not that of anyone else--least of all that of this
debonair individual, with his varying emotions.
And she went down the stairs with a resentful feeling against the
light-hearted melody of "Acushla Mavourneen."
"Be my champion, Mrs. Hardy," he begged at the breakfast-table, "or I am
tabooed forever by Miss Rachel."
"How so?"
"By what I intended as an act of homage, giving her a serenade at
sunrise in the love-songs of my forefathers."
"Nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "He never knew what his forefathers were
until Davy MacDougall brushed up his history; and you have not thought
much of the songs you were trying to sing, else you would know they
belong to the people of the present and future as well as the past.
"Trying to sing!" was all the comment Mr. Stuart made, turning with an
injured air to Tillie.
"Learn some Indian songs," advised that little conspirator impressively;
"in the Kootenai country you must sing Chinook if you want to be
appreciated."
"There speaks one who knows," chimed in Hardy lugubriously. "A year ago
I had a wife and an undivided affection; but I couldn't sing Chinook,
and the other fellow could, and for many consecutive days I had to take
a back seat."
"Hen! How dare you?"
"In fact," he continued, unrestrained by the little woman's tones or
scolding eyes, "I believe I have to thank jealousy for ever reinstating
me to the head of the family."
"Indeed," remarked Stuart, with attention impressively flattering; "may
I ask how it was effected?"
"Oh, very simply--very simply. Chance brought her the knowledge that
there was another girl up the country to whom her hero sang Chinook
songs, and, presto! she has ever since found English sufficient for all
her needs."
And Tillie, finding she had enough to do to defend herself without
teasing Rachel, gave her attention to her husband, and the girl turned
to Stuart.
"All this gives no reason for your spasms of Scotch expression this
morning," she reminded him.
"No? Well, my father confessor in the feminine, I was musical--beg
pardon, tried to be--because I awoke this morning with an unusually
light heart; and I sang Scotch songs--or tried to sing them--because I
was thinking of a Scotchman, and contemplating a visit to him to-day."
"Davy MacDougall?"
"The same."
"And you were with him only yesterday."
"And may say good-bye to him to-morrow for a long time."
"So you are going?" she asked, in a more subdued tone.
"I believe so!" And for the moment the question and answer made the two
seem entirely alone, though surrounded by the others. Then she laughed
in the old quizzical, careless way.
"I see now the inspiration to song and jubilance that prevented you from
sleeping," she said, nodding her head sagaciously. "It was the thought
of escaping from us and our isolated life. Is that it?"
"No, it is not," he answered earnestly. "My stay here has been a
pleasure, and out of it I hope will grow something deeper--a happiness."
The feeling in the words made her look at him quickly. His eyes met her
own, with some meaning back of their warmth that she did not understand.
Nine girls out of ten would have thought the words and manner suggestive
of a love declaration and would at once have dropped their eyes in the
prettiest air of confusion and been becomingly fluttered; but Rachel was
the tenth, and her eyes were remarkably steady as she returned his
glance with one of inquiry, reached for another biscuit, and said:
"Yes?"
But the low tones and his earnestness had not escaped two pairs of eyes
at the table--those of Mistress Tillie and Master Jim--both of them
coming to about the same conclusion in the matter, the one that Rachel
was flirting, and the other that Stuart "had a bad case of spoons."
Many were the expostulations when, after breakfast, Hardy's guest
informed him that his exit from their circle was likely to be almost as
abrupt as his entrance had been. In vain was there held out to him the
sport of their proposed hunt--every persuasive argument was met with a
regretful refusal.
"I am sorry to put aside that pleasure," he answered; "but, to tell the
truth, I scarcely realized how far the season has advanced. The snow
will soon be deep in the mountains, they tell me, and before that time I
must get across the country to Fort Owens. It is away from a railroad
far enough to make awkward travel in bad weather, and I realize that the
time is almost past when I can hope for dry days and sunshine; so,
thinking it over last night, I felt I had better start as early as
possible."
"You know nothing of the country in that direction?" asked Hardy.
"No more than I did of this; but an old school-fellow of mine is one of
the officers there--Captain Sneath. I have not seen him for years, but
can not consider my trip up here complete without visiting him; so, you
see--"
"Better fight shy o' that territory," advised Andrews, chipping in with
a cowboy's brief say-so. "Injun faction fights all through thar, an'
it's risky, unless ye go with a squad--a big chance to pack bullets."
"Then I shall have an opportunity of seeing life there under the most
stirring circumstances," replied Stuart in smiling unconcern, "for in
time of peace a military post is about the dullest place one can find."
"To be sure," agreed his adviser, eyeing him dubiously; "an' if ye find
yerself sort o' pinin' for the pomp o' war, as I heard an actor spoutin'
about once, in a theatre at Helena--well, down around Bitter Root River,
an' up the Nez Perce Fork, I reckon you'll find a plenty o' it jest
about this time o' year."
"And concluding as I have to leave at once," resumed Stuart, turning to
Hardy, "I felt like taking a ride up to MacDougall's for a good-bye. I
find myself interested in the old man, and would not like to leave
without seeing him again."
"I rather think I've got to stay home to-day," said his host ruefully,
"else I would go with you, but--"
"Not a word of your going," broke in Stuart; "do you think I've located
here for the purpose of breaking up your routine of stock and
agricultural schemes? Not a bit of it! I'm afraid, as it is, your
hospitality has caused them to suffer; so not a word of an escort. I
wouldn't take a man from the place, so--"
"What about a woman?" asked Rachel, with a challenging glance that was
full of mischief. For a moment he looked at a loss for a reply, and she
continued: "Because I don't mind taking a ride to Davy MacDougall's my
own self. As you say, the sunny days will be few now, and I may not have
another chance for weeks; so here I am, ready to guide you, escort you,
and guard you with my life."
What was there left for the man to say?
"What possessed you to go to-day, Rachel?" asked Tillie dubiously. "Do
you think it is quite--"
"Oh, yes, dear--quite," returned that young lady confidently; "and you
need not assume that anxious air regarding either the proprieties or my
youthful affections, for, to tell the truth, I am impelled to go through
sheer perversity; not because your latest favorite wants me, but simply
because he does not."
Twenty minutes after her offer they were mounted and clattering away
over the crisp bronze turf. To Stuart the task of entertaining a lady
whose remarks to him seldom verged from the ironical was anything but a
sinecure--more, it was easy to see that he was unused to it; and an
ungallant query to himself was: "Why did she come, anyway?" He had not
heard her reply to Tillie.
The air was crisp and cold enough to make their heavy wraps a comfort,
especially when they reached the higher land; the sun was showing
fitfully, low-flying, skurrying clouds often throwing it in eclipse.
"Snow is coming," prophesied the girl, with a weather-eye to the north,
where the sky was banking up in pale-gray masses; "perhaps not heavy
enough to impede your trip south, to Owens, but that bit over there
looks like a visiting-card of winter."
"How weather-wise you are!" he observed. "Now I had noticed not the
slightest significance in all that; in fact, you seem possessed of
several Indian accomplishments--their wood-lore, their language, their
habit of going to nature instead of an almanac; and did not Mrs. Hardy
say you knew some Indian songs? Who taught you them?"
"Songs came near getting us into a civil war at breakfast," she
observed, "and I am not sure that the ground is any more safe around
Indian than Scotch ones."
"There is something more substantial of the former race" he said,
pointing ahead.
It was the hulking figure of a Siwash, who had seen them first and tried
to dodge out of sight, and failing, halted at the edge of a little
stream.
"Hostile?" queried Stuart, relying more on his companion's knowledge
than his own; but she shook her head.
"No; from the Reservation, I suppose. He doesn't look like a blanket
brave. We will see."
Coming within speaking distance, she hailed him across the divide of the
little stream, and got in reply what seemed to Stuart an inextricable
mass of staccatos and gutturals.
"He is a Kootenai," she explained, "and wants to impress on our minds
that is a good Indian."
"He does not look good for much," was the natural remark of the white
man, eyeing Mr. Kootenai critically; "even on his native heath he is not
picturesque."
"No--poor imp!" agreed the girl, "with winter so close, their concern is
more how they are to live than how they appear to people who have no
care for them."
She learned he was on his way south to the Flathead Reservation; so he
had evidently solved the question of how he intended living for the
winter, at all events. He was, however, short of ammunition. When Rachel
explained his want, Stuart at once agreed to give him some.
"Don't be in a hurry!" advised his commander-in-chief; "wait until we
know how it is that he has no ammunition, and so short a distance from
his tribe. An Indian can always get that much if he is not too lazy to
hunt or trap, or is not too much of a thief."
But she found the noble red man too proud to answer many questions of a
squaw. The fear however, of hostilities from the ever-combative
Blackfeet seemed to be the chief moving cause.
"Rather a weak-backed reason," commented Rachel; "and I guess you can
dig roots from here to the Reservation. No powder, no shot."
"Squaw--papoose--sick," he added, as a last appeal to sympathy.
"Where?"
He waved a dirty hand up the creek.
"Go on ahead; show us where they are."
His hesitation was too slight to be a protest, but still there was a
hesitation, and the two glanced at each other as they noticed it.
"I don't believe there is either squaw or papoose," decided Stuart. "Lo
is a romancer."
But there was, huddled over a bit of fire, and holding in her arms a
little bundle of bronze flesh and blood. It was, as the Indian had said,
sick--paroxysms of shivers assailing it from time to time.
"Give me your whisky-flask!" Rachel said promptly; and dismounting, she
poured some in the tin cup at her saddle and set it on the fire--the
blue, sputtering flame sending the odor of civilization into the crisp
air. Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw, who had
sat stolidly, taking no notice of the new-comers; but as the girl's hand
was reached to help the child she raised her head, and then Rachel knew
who she was.
[Illustration: Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the
squaw]
They did not speak, but after a little of the warm liquor had forced
itself down the slight throat, Rachel left the cup in the mother's
hands, and reached again for the whisky.
"You can get more from Davy MacDougall," she said, in a
half-conciliatory tone at this wholesale confiscation; "and--and you
might give him some ammunition--not much."
"What a vanishing of resolves!" he remarked, measuring out an allowance
of shot; "and all because of a copper-colored papoose. So you have a bit
of natural, womanly weakness?"
The girl did not answer; there was a certain air of elation about her as
she undid a scarf from her throat and wrapped it about the little morsel
of humanity.
"Go past the sheep ranch," she directed the passive warrior, who stood
gazing at the wealth in whisky and powder. "Do you know where it
is--Hardy's? Tell them I sent you--show them that," and she pointed to
the scarf; "tell them what you need for squaw and papoose; they will
find it."
Skulking Brave signified that he understood, and then led Betty toward
her.
"He is not very hospitable," she confided to Stuart, in the white man's
tongue, "else he would not be in such haste to get rid of us."
And although their host did not impress one as having a highly strung
nervous organization, yet his manner during their halt gave them the
idea that he was ill at ease. They did not tarry long, but having given
what help they could, rode away, lighter of whisky and ammunition, and
the girl, strange enough, seemed lighter of heart.
After they had reached a point high above the little creek, they turned
for a look over the country passed. It lay in brown and blue-gray
patches, with dashes of dark-green on the highlands, where the pines
grew.
"What is the white thing moving along that line of timber?" asked the
girl, pointing in the direction they had come. It was too far off to see
clearly, but with the aid of Stuart's field-glass, it was decided to be
the interesting family they had stopped with a little ways back. And the
white thing noticed was a horse they were riding. It was getting over
the ground at the fastest rate possible with its triple weight, for the
squaw was honored with a seat back of her lord.
"I imagined they were traveling on foot, didn't you?" asked Stuart.
"What a fool he was to steal a white horse!" remarked the girl
contemptuously; "he might know it would be spotted for miles."