The guard dashed in, and was dextrously tripped by an unlooked-for

figure close to the wall, his gun wrenched from him, and a staggering

blow dealt that sent him to his knees.

Clouds had swept over the cold stars, and the sentry could see but dimly

the equestrian figure that came clattering down the avenue.

"Hadn't you better wait for company, Miss?" he called, but no answer was

given; and in much wonder, he was about to call again, when pistol-shots

from the shack aroused the camp. He called a halt; that was heeded no

more than his question, and he sent a random shot after the flying

figure--not for the purpose of hitting the girl, but to impress on her

the duty of a sentry and some idea of military rule. Before the last

dull thud of hoofs in the snow had ceased to be heard, Roberts had

staggered to the door, firing wildly, and calling to stop the

prisoner--to stop the horse-thief.

There was nothing in the camp to do it with. He was gone--everyone was

blaming everybody else for it; but no one thought of blaming the girl

who lay in a dead faint on the floor, where he had flung her, that none

might think she had let him go willingly. And Miss Rachel was cared for

very tenderly, and a man was sent to the ranch to assure Mrs. Hardy of

her safe-keeping, waking Mrs. Hardy out of a delicious sleep, and

mystifying her completely by the information. The only one about the

house who might have helped elucidate happened to be remarkably sound

asleep at the time the messenger arrived--an Arrow encased in the quiver

of rest.

CHAPTER IV.

THROUGH THE LOST MINE.

An hour before day in the Kootenais! Not the musical dawn of that early

autumn, when all the woods were a-quiver with the fullness of color and

sound; when the birds called to each other of the coming sun, and the

little rills of the shady places moistened the sweet fern and spread its

fragrance around and about, until one could find no couch so seductive

as one on the amber grasses with the rare, all-pervading scents of the

virgin soil.

Not any of those seductions solaced or made more bitter the watch of the

men who stood hopeless in the snow of that treacherous ravine. Not even

a fire dared be lit all the night long, because of those suddenly

murderous natives, who, through knowing the secrets of the cleft earth,

held their fates at the mercy of eager bronze hands.

"And one man who knew the country could have prevented this!" groaned

Hardy, with a thought of the little wife and Miss Margaret. How would

they listen to this story?

"If we had Genesee with us, we should not have been penned up in any

such fashion as this," decided Murray, stamping back and forward, as

many others were doing, to keep their blood in circulation--for what?

"Hard to tell," chimed in the scout from Idaho. "Don't know as it's any

better to be tricked by one's own gang than the hostiles. Genesee,

more'n likely, was gettin' ready for this when he run off the stock."

Just then something struck him. The snow made a soft bed, but the

assailant had not stopped to consider that, and quick as light his knee

was on the fallen man's chest.

"Take it back!" he commanded, with the icy muzzle of a revolver

persuading his meaning into the brain of the surprised scout. "That man

is no horse-thief. Take it back, or I'll save the Indians the trouble of

wasting lead on you."

"Well," reasoned the philosopher in the snow, "this ain't the damnedest

best place I've ever been in for arguin' a point, an' as you have

fightin' ideas on the question, an' I haven't any ideas, an' don't care

a hell of a sight, I'll eat my words for the time bein', and we'll

settle the question o' that knock on the head, if the chance is ever

given us to settle anything, out o' this gully."

"What's this?" and though only outlines of figures could be

distinguished, the voice was the authoritative one of Captain Holt. "Mr.

Stuart, I am surprised to find you in this sort of thing, and about that

squaw man back in camp. Find something better to waste your strength

for. There is no doubt in my mind now of the man's complicity--"

"Stop it!" broke in Stuart curtly; "you can hold what opinion you please

of him, but you can't tell me he's a horse-thief. A squaw man and

adopted Indian he may be and altogether an outlaw in your eyes; but I

doubt much your fitness to judge him, and advise you not to call him a

thief until you are able to prove your words, or willing to back them

with all we've got left here."

All they had left was their lives, and Stuart's unexpected recklessness

and sharp words told them his was ready as a pledge to his speech. None

cared, at that stage of the game, to question why. It was no time for

quarrels among themselves when each felt that with the daylight might

come death.

Afterward, when the tale was told, no man could remember which of them

first discovered a form in their midst that had not been with them on

their entrance--a breathless, panting figure, that leaned against one of

their horses.

"Who is it?" someone asked.

"What is it?"

No one answered--only pressed closer, with fingers on triggers, fearing

treachery. And then the panting figure raised itself from its rest on

the horse's neck, rose to a stature not easily mistaken, even in that

light, and a familiar, surly voice spoke:

"I don't reckon any of you need be puzzled much to find out; hasn't been

such a long time since you saw me."

"By God, it's Genesee!"

And despite the wholesale condemnation of the man, there was not a heart

that did not grow lighter with the knowledge. They knew, or believed,

that here was the one man who had the power to save them, if he cared to

use it; but would he?

"Jack!"

Someone, at sound of his voice, pushed through the crowd with

outstretched hand. It was not refused this time.

"I've come for you," was all Genesee said; then he turned to the others.

"Are you willing to follow me?" he asked, raising his voice a little.

"The horses can't go through where I've got to take you; you'll have to

leave them."

A voice close to his elbow put in a word of expostulation against the

desertion of the horses. Genesee turned on the speaker with an oath.

"You may command in a quiet camp, but we're outside of it now, and I put

just a little less value on your opinion than on any man's in the gulch.

This is a question for every man to answer for himself. You've lost

their lives for them if they're kept here till daylight. I'll take them

out if they're ready to come."

There was no dissenting voice. Compared with the inglorious death

awaiting them in the gulch, the deliverance was a God-send. They did not

just see how it was to be effected; but the strange certainty of hope

with which they turned to the man they had left behind as a horse-thief

was a thing surprising to them all, when they had time to think of

it--in the dusk of the morning, they had not.

He appeared among them as if a deliverer had materialized from the

snow-laden branches of cedar, or from the close-creeping clouds of the

mountain. They had felt themselves touched by a superstitious thrill

when he was found in their midst; but they knew that, come as he might,

be what he would, they had in him one to whom the mountains were as an

open book, as the Indians knew when they tendered him the significant

name of Lamonti.

Captain Holt was the only rebel on the horse question; to add those to

the spoils of the Indians was a bitter thing for him to do.

"It looks as if we were not content with them taking half our stock, but

rode up here to leave them the rest," he said, aggressively, to nobody

in particular. "I've a notion to leave only the carcasses."

"Not this morning," broke in the scout. "We've no time to wait for work

of that sort. Serves you right to lose them, too, for your damned

blunders. Come along if you want to get out of this--single file, and

keep quiet."

It was no time for argument or military measures for insubordination;

and bitter as the statement of inefficiency was, Captain Holt knew there

were some grounds for it, and knew that, in the eyes of the men, he was

judged from the same standpoint. The blind raid with green scouts did

seem, looking back at it, like a headlong piece of folly. How much of

folly the whole attack was, they did not as yet realize.

It was not far that Genesee led them through the stunted, gnarled growth

up the steep sides of the gulch. Half-way to the top there were, in the

summer-time, green grass and low brush in which the small game could

hide; but above that rose a sheer wall of rock clear up to where the

soil had gathered and the pines taken root.

In the dusk they could see no way of surmounting it; yet there was no

word of demur, not even a question. He was simply their hope, and they

followed him.

And their guide felt it. He knew few of them liked him personally, and

it made his victory the greater; but even above that was the thought

that his freedom was due to the girl who never guessed how he should use

it.

He felt, some way, as if he must account to her for every act she had

given him the power to perform, as if his life itself belonged to her,

and the sweetness of the thought was with him in every step of the night

ride, in every plan for the delivery of the men.

At the very foot of the rock wall he stopped and turned to the man next

him. It was Hardy.

"It's a case of 'crawl' here for a few lengths; pass the word along, and

look out for your heads."

The next instant he had vanished under the rock wall--Hardy following

him; then a flicker of light shone like a star as a guide for the

others, and in five minutes every man of them had wriggled through what

seemed but a slit in the solid front.

"A regular cave, by hooky!" said the moral guide from Idaho, as he stood

upright at last. His voice echoed strangely. "Hooky! hooky! hooky!"

sounded from different points where the shadows deepened, suggesting

endless additions to the room where they stood.

Genesee had halted and was splitting up some pine for a torch, using the

knife Rachel had cut his bonds with, and showing that the handle was

stained with blood, as were the sticks of pine he was handling.

"Look for some more sticks around here, and lend a hand," he said. "We

need more than one torch. I burnt up what I had in working through that

hole. I've been at it for three hours, I reckon, without knowing, till I

got the last stone away, whether I'd be in time or find daylight on the

other side."

"And is that what cut your hands?" asked Lieutenant Murray. "Why,

they're a sight! For heaven's sake, what have you been doing?"

"I found a 'cave-in' of rock and gravel right at the end of that

tunnel," answered Genesee, nodding the way they had just come, and

drawing their notice to fresh earth and broken stone thrown to the side.

"I had no tools here, nothing but that," and he motioned toward a

mallet-like thing of stone. "My tools were moved from the mine over to

Scot's Mountain awhile back, and as that truck had to be hoisted away,

and I hadn't time to invite help, it had to be done with these;" and he

held out his hands that were bleeding--a telling witness of his

endeavors to reach there in time. And every man of them felt it.

There was an impulsive move forward, and Hardy was the first to hold out

his hand. But Genesee stepped back, and leaned against the wall.

"That's all right, Hardy," he said, with something of his old careless

smile. "I'm glad you're the first, for the sake of old times; but I

reckon it would be playing it pretty low down on a friend to let him

take me in on false pretenses. You see I haven't been acquitted of

horse-stealing yet--about the most low-lived trade a man can turn to,

unless it is sheep-stealing."

"Oh, hell!" broke in one of the men, "this clears the horse business so

far as I'm concerned, and I can bet on the other boys, too!"

"Can you?" asked Genesee, with a sort of elated, yet conservative, air;

"but this isn't your game or the boys' game. I'm playing a lone hand,

and not begging either. That torch ready?"

The rebuff kept the others from any advance, if they had thought of

making it. Lieutenant Murray had picked up the stone mallet and was

examining it by the flickering light; one side was flattened a little,

like a tomahawk.

"That's a queer affair," he remarked. "What did you have it made for?"

"Have it made! The chances are that thing was made before Columbus

ever managed a sail-boat," returned Genesee. "I found a lot of them in

here; wedges, too, and such."

"In here?" and the men looked with a new interest at the rocky walls.

"What is it?"

"An extension I tumbled into, over a year back, when I was tunneling at

a drift the other side of the hill. One day I found that hole there, and

minded it this morning, so it came in handy. I reckon this is the

original Tamahnous mine of the old tribe. It's been lost over a hundred

years. The Kootenais only have a tradition of it."

"A mine--gold?"

"Well, I was digging for a silver show when I struck it," answered

Genesee; "and, so far as I see, that's what was here, but it's worked

out. Didn't do much prospecting in it, as I left the Kootenai hills less

than a week after. I just filled up the entry, and allowed it would keep

till I got back."

"Does it belong to you?" asked one man, with speculation in his voice.

Genesee laughed. "I reckon so. Tamahnous Peak is mine, and a few feet of

grazing land on the east. Nobody grudges it to me up this way. Indians

think it's haunted, 'cause all the rocks around it give echoes; and I--"

He ceased speaking abruptly, his eyes on the pile of debris in the

corner. Then he lit a fresh torch from the dying one, and gave the word

to strike for the outside, following single file, as the hill was pretty

well honey-combed, and it was wise to be cautious.

"Because," said their leader, "if any should stray off, we might not

have time this day of our Lord to come back and hunt him up."

Before leaving what seemed like the back entrance, he walked over to the

corner and picked up the thing that had arrested his attention a minute

before, and slipping it in his pocket, walked to the head of the long

line of men, several of whom were wounded, but only one less than the

number who had left camp. And the one lacking was the man who had fired

the first shot and killed the messenger from Grey Eagle--he himself

dying from a wound, after the ride into the gulch.

As the scout passed the men, a hand and a pair of gloves were thrust out

to him from a group; and turning his torch so that the light would show

the giver, he saw it was Stuart.

"Thank you, sir," he said, with more graciousness than most of the men

had ever seen in him; "I'll take them from you, as my own are damaged

some." They were torn to shreds, and the fingers under them worn to the

quick.

The echoing steps of the forty men were as if forty hundred were making

their way through the mine of the Tamahnous; for no living tribe ever

claimed it, even by descent. The hill that contained it had for

generations been given by tradition to the witches of evil, who spoke

through the rock--a clever scheme of those vanished workers to guard

their wealth, or the wealth they hoped to find; but for what use?

Neither silver in coin nor vessel can be traced as ever belonging to

tribes of the Northern Indians. Yet that honey-combed peak, with its

wide galleries, its many entries, and well-planned rooms, bespoke

trained skill in underground quarrying. From some unseen source fresh

air sifted through the darkness to them, and the tinkle of dripping

water in pools came to their ears, though the pools were shrouded in the

darkness that, just beyond the range of the few torches, was intense;

and after the long tramp through echoing winds and turns, the misty dawn

that was still early seemed dazzling to the eyes, red and haggard from

the vigil of the night.

"You will have to get away from here on a double-quick," said Genesee

sharply, after a glance at the sky and up the sides of the hill from

which they had come. "Once down there in the valley, the fog may hide

you till sun-up, and then, again, it mightn't. Just mind that they have

horses."

"We are not likely to forget it," was Captain Holt's answer; and then

hesitated a moment, looking at Genesee.

"Are you not coming with us?" asked Lieutenant Murray, giving voice to

the question in his commander's mind as well as the others.

"Yes, part of the way," said the scout quietly, but with a challenge to

detention in the slight pause with which he glanced at the group; "but I

have a beast to carry me back, and I'm just tired enough to use it." And

disappearing for a minute in the brush, he led out Mowitza, and,

mounting her, turned her head toward the terraces of the lower valley.

They passed the isolated cabin that brought back to Stuart a remembrance

of where they were; then down the steps of the Tamahnous and along the

little lake, all swathed alike in the snow and the mist leaving null all

character in the landscape.

The cabin was commented on by the men, to whom it was a surprise,

looming up so close to them through the cloud curtain.

"That's mine," their guide remarked, and one of them, puzzled, stated it

as his belief that Genesee claimed the whole Kootenai territory.

The scout gave up his saddle to a man with a leg-wound, but he did not

let go the bridle of Mowitza; and so they went on with their guide

stalking grimly ahead, ready, they all knew, to turn as fiercely against

them at a sign of restraint as he had worked for them, if a movement was

made to interfere with his further liberty.

The sun rolled up over the purple horizon--a great body of blushes

suffusing the mountains; but its chaste entrance had brazened into a

very steady stare before it could pierce the veil of the valleys, and

pick out the dots of moving blue against the snow on the home trail.

It had been a wonderfully quiet tramp. Most of the thoughts of the party

were of the man walking ahead of them, and his nearness made the

discussion of his actions awkward. They did not know what to expect of

him, and a general curiosity prevailed as to what he would do next.

They learned, when at last the ridge above camp was reached, about the

middle of the forenoon. He had been talking some to the man on Mowitza,

and when they reached that point he stopped.

"Whereabouts?" he asked; and the man pointed to a place where the snow

was colored by soil.

"Over there! I guess the boys buried him."

"Well, you can get down from that saddle now. I reckon you can walk down

to camp; if not, they can carry you." Then he turned to the rest.

"There's a body under that snow that I want," he said sententiously.

"I'm not in condition for any more digging," and he glanced at his

hands. "Are there any men among you that will get it out for me?"

"You bet!" was the unhesitating reply; and without question, hands and

knives were turned to the task, the man on horseback watching them

attentively.

"May I ask what that is for?" asked Captain Holt; at last, as amiably as

he could, in the face of being ignored and affronted at every chance

that was given Genesee. He had saved the commander's life; that was an

easy thing to do compared with the possibility of hiding his contempt.

He was openly and even unreasonably aggressive--one of the spots in his

nature that to a careless eye would appear the natural color of his

whole character. He did not answer at once, and Captain Holt spoke

again:

"What is the object of digging up that Indian?"

Then Genesee turned in the saddle.

"Just to give you all a little proof of how big a fool a man can be

without being a 'permanent' in a lunatic asylum."

And then he turned his attention again to the men digging up the loose

earth. They had not far to go; small care had been taken to make the

grave deep.

"Take care there with your knives," said Genesee as one shoulder was

bared to sight. "Lift him out. Here--give him to me."

"What in----"

"Give him to me!" he repeated. "I've given your damned fool lives back

to forty of you, and all I'm asking for it is that Kootenai's dead

body."

Stuart stooped and lifted the chill, dark thing, and other hands were

quick to help. The frozen soil was brushed like dust from the frozen

face, and then, heavy--heavy, it was laid in the arms of the man waiting

for it.

He scanned from the young face to the moccasined feet swiftly, and then

turned his eyes to the others.

"Where's his blanket?" he demanded; and a man who wore it pushed forward

and threw it over the figure.

"Denny took it," he said in extenuation, "and when Denny went under, I

took it."

"Yes!" and again his eyes swept the crowd. "Now I want his rifle, his

knife, a snake-skin belt, and a necklace of bear's teeth--who's got

them?"

"Well, I'll be damned!" "How's that for second sight?" "Beats the devil

out of hell!" were some of the sotto-voce remarks exchanged at the

enumeration of the things wanted.

"I've no time to waste in waiting," he added. "If they're in this crowd

and ain't given up, I'll straighten the account some day, if I have to

hunt five years for the trail to them. I'm a-waiting."

His hand was laid on the breast of the dead Indian as he spoke, and

something in the touch brought a change to his face. The hand was

slipped quickly inside the fringed shirt, and withdrawn, clasping a roll

of parchment cured in Indian fashion. A bitter oath broke from him as he

untied the white sinews of the deer, and glanced at the contents.

"What is it? What is it?" was the question from all sides.

Genesee, in a sort of fury, seemed to hear most clearly that of the, for

the hour, displaced commander.

"I'll tell you what it is!" he burst out wrathfully. "It's a message of

peace from the Kootenai tribe--an offer of their help against the

Blackfeet any time the troops of the United States need them. It is sent

by Grey Eagle, the oldest of their war chiefs, and the messenger sent

was Grey Eagle's grandson, Snowcap--the future chief of their people.

And you have had him shot down like a dog while carrying that message.

By God! I wouldn't have blamed them if they had scalped every mother's

son of you."

To say that the revelation was impressive, would express the emotions of

the men but mildly. Captain Holt was not the only one of them who turned

white at the realization of what a provoked uprising of those joint

tribes would mean, in the crippled condition of the camp. It would mean

a sweeping annihilation of all white blood in their path; the troops

would have enough to do to defend themselves, without being able to help

the settlers.

"In God's name, Genesee, is this true?" and forgetting all animosity in

the overwhelming news, Holt pressed forward, laying his hand on the

shoulder of the dead messenger.

"Take it off!" yelled Genesee, looking at the unconscious hand that

involuntarily had moved toward him. "Take it off, or, by Heaven, I'll

cut it off!"

And his fingers closing nervously on the hunting-knife emphasized his

meaning, and showed how stubborn and sleepless were the man's

prejudices.

The hand dropped, and Genesee reached out the document to one of the

crestfallen scouts.

"Just read that out loud for the benefit of anyone that can't understand

my way of talking," he suggested with ironical bitterness; "and while

you are about it, the fellows that stripped this boy will be good enough

to ante up with everything they've got of his--and no time to waste

about it either."

And Captain Holt, with a new idea of the seriousness of the demand,

seconded it, receiving with his own hands the arms and decorations that

had been seized by the victorious Denny, and afterward divided among his

comrades. Genesee noted that rendering up of trifling spoils with sullen

eyes, in which the fury had not abated a particle.

"A healthy crew you are!" he remarked contemptuously; "a nice,

clean-handed lot, without grit enough to steal a horse, but plenty of it

for robbing a dead boy. I reckon no one of you ever had a boy that age

of your own."

Several of them--looking in the dark, dead face--felt uneasy, and forgot

for the moment that they were lectured by a horse-thief; forgot even how

light a thing the life of an Indian was anyway.

"Don't blame the whole squad," said the man who took the articles from

the Captain and handed them up to Genesee. "Denny captured them when he

made the shot, just as anyone would do, and it's no use cussin' about

Denny; he's buried up in that gulch--the Kootenais finished him."

"And saved me the trouble," added the scout significantly.

He was wrapping as well as he could the gay blanket over the rigid form.

The necklace was clasped about the throat, but the belt was more awkward

to manage, and was thrust into the bosom of Genesee's buckskin shirt,

the knife in his belt, the rifle swung at his back.

There was something impressively ghastly in those two figures--the live

one with the stubborness of fate, and the stolidity, sitting there, with

across his thighs the blanketed, shapeless thing that had held a life;

and even the husk seemed a little more horrible with its face hidden

than when revealed more frankly; there was something so weirdly

suggestive in the motionless outlines.

"No, I don't want that," he said, as the man who read the message was

about to hand it back to him; "it belongs to the command, and I may get

a dose of cold lead before I could deliver it."

Then he glanced about, signaling Stuart by a motion of his head.

"There's a lady across in the valley there that I treated pretty badly

last night," he said, in a tone so natural that all near could hear him,

and more than one head was raised in angry question. "She was just good

enough to ride over from the ranch to bring a letter to me--hearing I

was locked up for a horse-thief, and couldn't go after it. Well, as I

tell you, I was just mean enough to treat her pretty bad--flung her on

the floor when she tried to stop me, and then nabbed the beast she rode

to camp on--happened to be my own; but may be she won't feel so bad if

you just tell her what the nag was used for; and may be that will show

her I didn't take the trail for fun."

"That" was one of the gloves he had worn from his hands with his night's

work, and there were stains on it darker than those made with earth.

"I'll tell her;" and then an impulsive honesty of feeling made him add:

"You need never fear her judgment of you, Jack."

The two looked a moment in each other's eyes, and the older man spoke.

"I've been hard on you," he said deliberately, "damned hard; all at once

I've seen it, and all the time you've been thinking a heap better of me

than I deserved. I know it now, but it's about over. I won't stand in

your way much longer; wait till I come back--"

"You are coming back? and where are you going?" The questions, a tone

louder than they had used, were heard by the others around. Genesee

noted the listening look on the faces, and his words were answers to

them as much as to the questioner.

"I'm going to take the trail for the Kootenai village; if any white man

is let reach it, or patch up the infernal blunder that's been made, I

can do it with him," and his hand lay on the breast of the shrouded

thing before him.

"If I get out of it alive, I'll be back to meet the Major; if I

don't"--and this time his significant glance was turned unmistakably to

the blue coats and their leader--"and if I don't, you'd better pack your

carcasses out of this Kootenai valley, and hell go with you."

So, with a curse for them on his lips, and the dogged determination to

save them in his heart, he nodded to Hardy, clasped the hand of Stuart,

and turning Mowitza's head, started with that horrible burden back over

the trail that would take a day and a night to cover.

The men were grateful for the bravery that had saved their lives, but

burned under the brutal taunts that had spared nothing of their

feelings. His execrable temper had belittled his own generosity.

He was a squaw man, but they had listened in silence and ashamed, when

he had presumed to censure them. He was a horse-thief, yet the men who

believed it watched, with few words, the figure disappear slowly along

the trail, with no thought of checking him.

CHAPTER V.

HIS WIFE'S LETTER.

In the bosom of Rachel's family strange thoughts had been aroused by

that story of Genesee's escape.

They were wonderfully sparing of their comments in her presence; for,

when the story came to her of what he had done when he left her, she

laughed.

"Yet he is a horse-thief," she said, in that tone of depreciation that

expresses praise, "and he sent me his glove? Well, I am glad he had the

grace to be sorry for scattering me over the floor like that. And we owe

it to him that we see you here alive again? We can appreciate his

bravery, even say prayers for him, if the man would only keep out of

sight, but we couldn't ask him to a dinner party, supposing we gave

dinner parties, could we, Tillie?"

And Tillie, who had impulsively said "God bless him!" from the shelter

of her husband's arms, collapsed, conscience-stricken and tearful.

"You have a horrid way, Rachel, of making people feel badly," she said,

in the midst of her thankfulness and remorse; "but wait until I see him

again--I will let him know how much we can appreciate such courage as

that. Just wait until he comes back!"

"Yes," said the girl, with all the irony gone from her voice, only the

dreariness remaining, "I'm waiting."

The words started Tillie to crying afresh; for, in the recesses of her

own bosom, another secret of Genesee's generosity was hidden for

prudential motives--the fact that it was he who had sent the guide for

Rachel that terrible night of the snow. And Tillie was not a good keeper

of secrets--even this thoroughly wise one was hard to retain, in her

gladness at having her husband back!

"The man seems a sort of shepherd of everything that gets astray in

these hills," said Lieutenant Murray, who was kindly disposed toward all

creation because of an emotional, unsoldier-like welcome that had been

given him by the little non-commissioned officer in petticoats. "He

first led us out of that corral in the hills and brought us back where

we belonged, and then dug up that dead Indian and started to take him

where he belonged. I tell you there was a sort of--of sublimity in the

man as he sat there with that horrible load he was to carry, that is,

there would have been if he hadn't 'cussed' so much."

"Does he swear?" queried Fred.

"Does he? My child, you would have a finely-trained imagination if you

could conceive the variety of expressions by which he can consign a

citizen to the winter resort from which all good citizens keep free. His

profanity, they say, is only equaled by his immorality. But, ah--what a

soldier he would make! He is the sort of a man that men would walk right

up to cannon with--even if they detested him personally."

"And a man needs no fine attributes or high morality to wield that sort

of influence, does he?" asked Rachel, and walked deliberately away

before any reply could be made.

But she was no more confident than they of his unimpeachable worth.

There was the horse-thieving still unexplained; he had not even denied

it to her. And she came to the conclusion that she herself was sadly

lacking in the material for orthodox womanhood, since the more proof she

had of his faults, the more solidly she took her position for his

defense. It had in it something of the same blind stubbornness that

governed his likes and dislikes, and that very similarity might have

accounted for the sort of understanding that had so long existed between

them. And she had more than the horse-stealing to puzzle over. She had

that letter he had thrust in her hand and told her to read; such a

pleading letter, filled with the heart-sickness of a lonely woman. She

took it out and re-read it that time when she walked away from their

comments; and reading over the lines, and trying to read between them,

she was sorely puzzled:

"DEAR JACK: I wrote you of my illness weeks ago, but the letter

must have been lost, or else your answer, for I have not heard

a word from you, and I have wanted it more than I can tell you.

I am better, and our little Jack has taken such good care of

me. He is so helpful, so gentle; and do you know, dear, he

grows to look more like you every day. Does that seem strange?

He does not resemble me in the least. You will think me very

exacting, I suppose, when I tell you that such a child, and

such a home as you have given me, does not suffice for my

content. I know you will think me ungrateful, but I must speak

of it to you. I wrote you before, but no answer has come. If I

get none to this, I will go to find you--if I am strong enough.

If I am not, I shall send Jack. He is so manly and strong, I

know he could go. I will know then, at least, if you are

living. I feel as if I am confessing a fault to you when I tell

you I have heard from him at last--and more, that I was so

glad to hear!

"Jack--dear Jack--he has never forgotten. He is free now; would

marry me yet if it were possible. Write to me--tell me if it

can ever be. I know how weak you will think me. Perhaps my late

ill-health has made me more so; but I am hungry for the sound

of the dear voice, and I am so alone since your father died.

You will never come back; and you know, Jack, how loneliness

always was so dreadful to me--even our boy is not enough. He

does not understand. Come back, or write to me. Let my boy know

his father, or else show me how to be patient; this silence is

so terrible to YOUR WIFE.

"Jack, what a mockery that word looks--yet I am grateful."

This was the letter he had told her to read and give to Stuart, if he

never returned; but she gave it to no one. She mentioned it to no one,

only waited to see if he ever came back, and with each reading of that

other woman's longings, there grew stronger in her the determination

that his life belonged to the writer of that letter and her child--her

boy, who looked like him. Surely there was a home and an affection that

should cure him of this wild, semi-civilized life he was leading. She

was slipping away that almighty need he had shown of herself. She grimly

determined that all remembrance of it must be put aside; it was such an

unheard-of, reasonless sort of an attraction anyway, and if she really

had any influence over him, it should be used to make him answer that

letter as it should be answered, and straighten out the strange puzzles

in it. All this she determined she would tell him--when he got back.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE HEIGHTS.

While they commented, and wondered, and praised, and found fault with

him, the day drifted into darkness, the darkness into a dreary dawn; and

through all changes of the hours the outlaw stalked, with sometimes his

ghastly companion bound to the saddle, and then again he would remount,

holding Snowcap in his arms--but seldom halting, never wavering; and

Mowitza, who seemed more than ever a familiar spirit, forged ahead as if

ignoring the fact of hunger and scanty herbage to be found, her sturdy

persistence suggesting a realization of her own importance.

A broad trail was left for them, one showing that the detachment of

braves and the horses of the troops had returned under forced march to

bear the news to their village--and such news!

The man's dark face hardened and more than one of those expressive

maledictions broke from him as he thought over it. All his sympathies

were with them. For five years they had been as brethren to him; never

had any act of treachery touched him through them. To their people he

was not Genesee the outcast, the immoral, the suspected. He was

Lamonti--of the mountains--like their own blood.

He was held wise in their councils, and his advice had weight.

He could have ruled their chief, and so their nation, had he been

ambitious for such control.

He was their adopted son, and had never presumed on their liking, though

he knew there was little in their slender power that would not have been

his had he desired it.

Now he knew he would be held their enemy. His influence had encouraged

the sending of that message and the offered braves to the commander of

the troops. Would they grant him a hearing now? or would they shoot him

down, as the soldier had shot Snowcap, with his message undelivered?

Those questions, and the retrospection back of them, were with him as he

went upward into the mountains to the north.

Another night was falling slowly, and the jewels of the far skies one by

one slipped from their ether casket, and shone with impressive serenity

on the crusted snow. Along the last ridge Mowitza bore for the last time

her double burden. There was but a slope to descend, a sheltered cove to

reach, and Snowcap would be given back to his kindred.

The glittering surface of the white carpet warmed into reflected lights

as the moon, a soft-footed, immature virgin, stole after the stars and

let her gleams be wooed and enmeshed in the receptive arms of the

whispering pine. Not a sound broke through the peace of the heights. In

their sublime isolation, they lift souls as well as bodies above the

commonplace, and the rider, the stubborn keeper of so many of their

secrets, threw back his head with a strange smile in his eyes as the

last summit was reached--and reached in the light of peace. Was it an

omen of good? He thought of that girl back in the valley who was willing

to share this life of the hills with him. All things beautiful made him

think of her, and the moon-kissed night was grand, up there above where

men lived. He thought of her superb faith, not in what he was, but in

what her woman's instinct told her it was possible for him to be. What a

universe of loves in human hearts revolves about those unseen, unproven

substances!

He thought of the time when she had lain in his arms as Snowcap was

lying, and he had carried her over the hills in the moonlight. He was

bitterly cold, but through the icy air there came the thrill and flush

of that long-past temptation. He wondered what she would say when they

told her how he had used his freedom. The conviction of her approval

again gave that strange smile of elation to his eyes; and the cold and

hunger were ignored, and his fatigue fell from him. And with the

tenderness that one gives to a sleeping child, he adjusted with his

wounded hands the blanket that slipped from the dead boy, raising one of

the rigid arms the better to shroud it in the gay colors.

Then the peace of the heights was broken by a sharp report; the

whiteness of the moonlight was crossed by the quick, red flash of death

and Mowitza stopped still in her tracks, while her master, with that

dead thing clasped close in his arms, lunged forward on her neck.

CHAPTER VII.

A REBEL.

Within the confines of Camp Kootenai there was a ripple of rejoicing. At

last, after four days lost because of the snow, Major Dreyer had

arrived, pushing on with all possible haste after meeting the

runner--and, to the bewilderment of all, he rode into camp on one of the

horses stolen almost a week ago.

"No mystery about it--only a little luck," he said in explanation. "I

found him at Holland's as I came up. A white man belonging to the

Blackfeet rode him in there several nights ago. The white man got drunk,

picked a row, and got his pay for it. They gave him grave-room down

there, and in the morning discovered that the beast had our brand, so

gave him up to us as we came through."

Needless to say that this account was listened to with unusual interest.

A man belonging to the Blackfeet! That proved Genesee's theory of which

he had spoken to Captain Holt--the theory that was so thoroughly

discredited.

When word was brought that the Major's party had been sighted from the

south, Fred and Rachel could hardly wait for the saddles to be thrown on

the horses.

Tillie caught the fever of impatience, and rode down beside Hardy.

Stuart was not about. The days since Genesee's departure he had put in

almost entirely with the scouts stationed to note any approach from the

north; he was waiting for that coming back. Kalitan, for the first time

since Genesee's flight, came into camp. The man who had seemed the

friend of his friend was again in command; and he showed his

appreciation of the difference by presenting himself in person beside

Rachel, to whom he had allied himself in a way that was curious to the

rest, and was so devotionally serious to himself.

"Then, perhaps it was not that Genesee who stole the horses, after all,"

broke in Fred, as her father told the story.

"Genesee!--nonsense!" said the Major brusquely. "We must look into that

affair at once," and he glanced at the Captain; "but if that man's a

horse-thief, I've made a big mistake--and I won't believe it until I

have proof."

As yet there had been no attempt at any investigation of affairs, only

an informal welcoming group, and Fred, anxious to tell a story that she

thought astonishing, recounted breathlessly the saving of the men by way

of the mine, and of the gloves and the hands worn in that night's work,

and last, of the digging up of that body and carrying it away to the

mountains.

Her father, at first inclined to check her voluble recital that would

come to him in a more official form, refrained, as the practical array

of facts showing through her admiration summed themselves up in a mass

that echoed his convictions.

"And that is the man suspected of stealing a few horses? Good God! what

proof have you that will weigh against courage like that?"

"Major, he scarcely denied it," said the Captain, in extenuation of

their suspicions. "He swore the Kootenais did not do it, and that's all

he would say. He was absent all the afternoon and all the night of the

thievery, and refused to give any account whatever of his absence, even

when I tried to impress him with the seriousness of the situation. The

man's reputation, added to his suspicious absence, left me but one thing

to do--I put him under guard."

"That does look strange," agreed the Major, with, a troubled face;

"refused--"

He was interrupted by a sound from Rachel, who had not spoken after the

conversation turned to Genesee. She came forward with a low cry,

trembling and passionate, doubt and hope blending in her face.

"Did you say the night the horses were stolen?" she demanded. All

looked at her wonderingly, and Kalitan instinctively slid a little

nearer.

"Yes, it was in the night," answered the Captain, "about two o'clock;

but you surely knew about it?"

"I? I knew nothing," she burst out furiously; "they lied to me--all of

you. You told me it was in the morning. How dared you--how dared you do

it?"

The Major laid a restraining hand on her arm; he could feel that she was

trembling violently. She had kept so contemptuously cool through all

those days of doubt, but she was cool no longer; her face was white, but

it looked a white fury.

"What matter about the hour, Miss Rachel?" asked the commander; and she

shook off his hand and stepped back beside Kalitan, as if putting

herself where Genesee had put himself--with the Indians.

"Because I could have told where Jack Genesee was that night, if they

had not deceived me. He was with me."

Tillie gave a little cry of wonder and contrition. She saw it all now.

"But--but you said it was a Kootenai who brought you home," she

protested feebly; "you told us Lamonti."

"He is a Kootenai by adoption, and he is called Lamonti," said the girl

defiantly; "and the night those horses were run off, he was with me from

an hour after sundown until four o'clock in the morning."

That bold statement had a damaging ring to it--unnecessarily so; and the

group about her, and the officers and men back of them, looked at her

curiously.

"Then, since you can tell this much in his favor, can you tell why he

himself refused to answer so simple a question?" asked Major Dreyer

kindly.

That staggered her for a moment, as she put her hand up in a helpless

way over her eyes, thinking--thinking fast. She realized now what it

meant, the silence that was for her sake--the silence that was not

broken even to her. And a mighty remorse arose for her doubt--the doubt

she had let him see; yet he had not spoken! She raised her eyes and met

the curious glances of the men, and that decided her. They were the men

who had from the first condemned him--been jealous of the commander's

trust.

"Yes, I think I can tell you that, too," she said frankly. "The man is

my friend. I was lost in the snow that night; he found me, and it took

us all night to get home. He knows how these people think of him;" and

her eyes spared none. "They have made him feel that he is an outcast

among them. They have made him feel that a friendship or companionship

with him is a discredit to any woman--oh, I know! They think so now, in

spite of what he has done for them. He knows that. He is very generous,

and wanted, I suppose, to spare me; and I--I was vile enough to doubt

him," she burst out. "Even when I brought him his horse, I half believed

the lies about him, and he knew it, and never said a word--not one

word."

"When you brought him his horse?" asked the Major, looking at her

keenly, though not unkindly.

Her remorse found a new vent in the bravado with which she looked at

them all and laughed.

"Yes," she said defiantly, as if there was a certain comfort in braving

their displeasure, and proving her rebellion to their laws; "yes, I

brought him his horse--not by accident either! I brought him brandy and

provisions; I brought him revolvers and ammunition. I helped him to

escape, and I cut the bonds your guards had fastened him with. Now, what

are you going to do about it?"

Tillie gasped with horror. She did not quite know whether they would

shoot her as a traitor, or only imprison her; but she knew military law

could be a very dreadful thing, and her fears were extravagant.

As for Miss Fred, her eyes were sparkling. With the quick deductions of

her kind, she reasoned that, without the escape that night, the men

would have died in that trap in the hills, and a certain delicious

meeting and its consequences--of which she was waiting to tell the

Major,--would never have been hers. Her feelings were very frankly

expressed, as she stepped across to the self-isolated rebel and kissed

her.

"You're a darling--and a plucky girl," she said warmly; "and you never

looked so pretty in your life."

The defiant face did not relax, even at that intelligence. Her eyes were

on the commander, her judge. And he was looking with decided interest at

her.

"Yours is a very grave offense, Miss Rachel," he said, with deliberation

that struck added terrors to Tillie's heart. "The penalty of contriving

the escape of prisoners is one I do not like to mention to you; but

since the man in this case was innocent, and I take your evidence in

proof--well, that might be some extenuation of the act."

"I didn't know he was innocent when I helped him," she broke in; "I

thought the horses were stolen after he left me."

"That makes it more serious, certainly;" but his eyes were not at all

serious. "And since you seem determined to allow nothing in extenuation

of your own actions, I can only say that--that I value very highly the

forty men whose lives were saved to us by that escape; and when I see

Mr. Genesee, I will thank him in the warmest way at my command;" and he

held out his hand to the very erect, very defiant rebel.

She could scarcely believe it when she heard the words of praise about

her; when one man after another of that rescued crowd came forward to

shake hands with her--and Hardy almost lifted her off her feet to kiss

her. "By George! I'm proud of you, Rachel," he said impulsively. "You

are plucky enough to--to be Genesee himself."

The praise seemed a very little thing to her. Her bravado was over; she

felt as if she must cry if they did not leave her alone. Of what use

were words, if he should never come back--never know that he was cleared

of suspicion? If they had so many kind words now, why had they not found

some for him when he needed them? She did not know the uncompromising

surliness that made him so difficult of approach to many people,

especially any who showed their own feeling of superiority, as most of

them did, to a squaw man.

She heard that term from the Major, a moment after he had shaken hands

with her. He had asked what were the other suspicions mentioned against

Genesee; she could not hear the answer--they had moved a little apart

from her--but she could hear the impatience with which he broke in on

their speech.

"A squaw man!--well, what if he is?" he asked, with a serene

indifference to the social side of the question. "What difference does

it make whether the man's wife has been red, or white, or black, so long

as she suited him? There are two classes of squaw men, as there are of

other men on the frontier--the renegades and the usual percentage of

honest and dishonest citizens. You've all apparently been willing to

understand only the renegades. I've been along the border for thirty

years, and some of the bravest white men I've ever seen had Indian

wives. Some of the men whose assistance in Indian wars has been

invaluable to us are ranchmen whose children are half-breeds, and who

have taught their squaws housework and English at the same time, and

made them a credit to any nation. There's a heap of uncalled-for

prejudice against a certain class of those men; and, so far as I've

noticed, the sneak who abandons his wife and children back in the

States, or borrows the wife of someone else to make the trip out here

with, is the specimen that is first to curl his lip at the squaw man.

That girl over there strikes me as showing more common sense than the

whole community; she gave him the valuation of a man."

The Major's blood was up. It was seldom that he made so long a speech;

but the question was one against which he had clashed often, and to find

the old prejudice was so strong a factor in the disorganizing of an

outpost was enraging.

"And do you realize what that man did when he took that trail north?" he

demanded impressively. "He knew that he carried his life in his hand as

surely as he carried that body. And he went up there to play it against

big odds for the sake of a lot of people who had a contemptible contempt

for him."

"And cursed us soundly while he did it," added one of the men, in an

aside; but the Major overheard it.

"Yes, that's like him, too," he agreed. "But, if any of you can show me

so great a courage and conscientiousness in a more refined citizen, I'm

waiting to see it."

Then there was the quick fall of hoofs outside the shack, hurried

questions and brief answers. One of the scouts from the north ridge

rushed in and reported to Major Dreyer.

"A gang o' hostiles are in sight--not many; they've got our horses.

Think they carry a flag o' truce, but couldn't spot it for sure. They're

not a fighten' gang, any way, fur they're comen' slow and carryen'

somethen'."

"A flag of truce? That means peace. Thank God!" said Tillie, fervently.

"And Genesee," added the Major.

As for Rachel, her heart seemed in her throat. She tried to speak, to

rush out and learn their message, but she could not move. An awful

presentiment bound her. "Carrying something!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"WHEN THE SUN GOETH DOWN."

"Opitsah!--Klahowya."

They brought him--his dark, sad-faced brothers--bearing him on a bed of

elastic poles and the skins of beasts; and walking through the lines of

blue-coats as if not seeing them, they laid him on the floor of the

shack, and grouped themselves clannishly in one corner, near his head.

Stuart knelt with trembling hands to examine the cruel wound in the

throat, and turned away, shaking his head. He could not speak. There was

a slow, inward hemorrhage. He was bleeding to death.

"Determination has kept him alive," decided the Major, when the

spokesman of the Kootenais told of the shot on the mountain, and how

they had to carry him, with Snowcap in his arms, to the wigwam of Grey

Eagle; of the council through which he kept up, and then told them he

would live until he reached camp--he was so sure of it! For the body of

Snowcap he had asked the horses left in the gulch, and was given

them--and much more, because of the sorrow of their nation. He did not

try to speak at first, only looked about, drinking in the strange

kindness in all the faces; then he reached out his hand toward Rachel.

"Opitsah!" he whispered, with that smile of triumph in his eyes. "I

told you I'd live--till I got back to you;" and then his eyes turned to

the Major. "I got a stand-off on the hostilities--till your

return--inside my coat--I wrote it." He ceased, gasping, while they drew

out the "talking-paper" with the mark of Grey Eagle at the foot, and on

it also were their murderous stains.

"You--treat with them now," he continued, "but--be careful. Don't shirk

promises. They're easy managed now--like a lot of children, just because

they shot me--when I was carrying Snowcap home. But they'll get

over--that, and then--be careful. They were ready for the war-path--when

I got there."

He saw Captain Holt not far from him, and through the pallor of his face

a faint flush crept.

"Well, I've come back for my trial," he scowled, with something of his

old defiance; and the Major knelt down and took his hand.

"That's all over, Genesee," he said gently. "It was a big mistake. There

is not a soul here with anything but gratitude and admiration for you.

It was your own fault you were suspected; Miss Rachel has explained. Why

did you not?"

He did not answer--only looked at her, and seemed gathering his strength

for some final effort.

"I want someone--to write."

He was still holding Rachel's hand. She had not said a word; only her

eyes seemed to tell him enough.

Stuart came forward. "Will I do, Jack?"

Jack nodded, and more than one was astonished at the signs of grief in

Stuart's face. Rachel was past speculation.

"This lady, here," said Genesee, motioning to her, "has done a heap for

me--more than she knows--I reckon--and I want--to square things."

Rachel attempted to speak; but he raised his hand.

"Don't," he whispered. "Let me say it--tillikum." Then he turned to

Stuart. "There's a bit of ground up in the hills; it's mine, and I want

her to have it--it's Tamahnous Hill--and the old mine--write it."

She thought of that other woman, and tried to protest. Again he saw it,

and pressed her hand for silence.

"I want her to have it--for she likes these hills, and--she's been

mighty good to me. No one will interfere--with her claim--I reckon."

"No one shall interfere," said Stuart, toward whom he looked. Genesee

smiled.

"That's right--that's all right. She won't be afraid of the--witches.

And she'll tell you where I want to go--she knows." His voice was

growing fainter; they could see he was almost done with the Kootenai

valley.

"In my pocket is something--from the mine," he said, looking at Rachel;

"it will show you--and there's another will in the bank--at

Holland's--it is--for Annie."

Stuart guided his hand for the signature to the paper. Stuart wrote his

own, and Hardy followed, his eyes opening in wonder at something written

there.

A slight rustle in the group at the door drew the Major's attention, and

a young face coming forward made him turn to Stuart.

"I had altogether forgotten that I brought someone from Holland's for

you--a boy sent there to find J. S. Stuart. I knew it must be C. S.

Stuart, though, and brought him along."

A dark-faced little fellow, with a sturdy, bright look, walked forward

at the commander's motion; but his wondering gaze was on the man lying

there with such an eager look in his eyes.

"This is Mr. Stuart," said the Major, and then turned to Genesee.

The Stuart's face was white as the wounded man's as the boy looked up at

him, frankly.

"I'm--I'm Jack," he said; "and mamma sent a letter."

The letter was held out, and the boy's plucky mouth trembled a little at

the lack of welcome; not even a hand-shake, and he was such a little

fellow--about ten. But Stuart looked like a man who sees a ghost. He

took the letter, after a pause that seemed very long to the people who

watched his strange manner. Then he looked at the envelope, took the boy

by the arm, and thrusting the Major blindly aside, he knelt by Genesee.

"This is for you, Jack," he said, motioning the others back by a

gesture--all but Rachel--that hand-clasp was so strong! "and your

namesake has brought it."

"Read it," and he motioned Rachel to take it; "read me Annie's letter."

She read it in a low tone--a repetition of that other plea that Jack had

left with her, and its finale the same longing request that her boy

should at last be let know his father. Stuart was in tears when she

finished.

"Jack," he said, "ten years is a long time; I've suffered every hour of

them. Give me the boy; let me know you are agreed at last. Give Annie

back to me!"

Jack raised his hand to the bewildered boy, who took it reverently.

"You are Annie's boy?" he whispered; "kiss me for her--tell her--" And

then his eyes sought Stuart's--"I held them in pawn for you. I reckon

you're earnest enough now--to redeem them. What was that verse

about--giving back the pledge when--the sun goes down? You read it.

Mother used to read it--little mother! She will be glad, I

reckon--she--"

Stuart was sobbing outright, with his arms about the boy. Rachel, with

the letter in her hand, was as puzzled as those who had drawn out of

hearing. Only the Indians stood close and impassive. Jack, meeting her

eyes, smiled.

"You know now--all about--them--and Annie. That was why I tried--to keep

away from you--you know now."

But she did not know.

"You took his wife from him?" she said, in a maze of conflicting

revelations; and Jack looked at Stuart, as she added, "and who were

you?"

"He is my brother!" said Stuart, in answer to that look of Jack's. "He

would not let me say it before--not for years. But he is my brother!"

The words were loud enough for all to hear, and there was a low chorus

of surprise among the group. All concealment was about over for

Genesee--even the concealment of death.

Then Stuart looked across at Rachel. He heard that speech, "You took his

wife from him;" and he asked no leave of Jack to speak now.

"Don't think that of him," he said, steadily. "You have been the only

one who has, blindfolded, judged him aright. Don't fail him now. He is

worth all the belief you had in him. The story I read you that night was

true. His was the manhood you admired in it; mine, the one you

condemned. As I look back on our lives now, his seems to me one immense

sacrifice--and no compensations--one terrible isolation; and now--now

everything comes to him too late!"

"He is--sorry," whispered Genesee, "and talks wild--but--you know now?"

"Yes," and the girl's face had something of the solemn elation of his

own. "Yes, I know now."

"And you--will live in the hills--may be?--not so very far away

from--me. In my pocket--is something--from the mine--Davy will tell you.

Be good to--my Kootenais; they think--a heap of you. Kalitan!"

The Arrow came forward, and shook reverently the hand of the man who had

been master to him. The eyes roved about the room, as if in search of

others unseen. Rachel guessed what was wanted, and motioned to the

Indians.

"Come; your brother wants you," she said. And as they grouped about him

and her, they barred out the soldiers and civilians--the white brother

and child--barred out all from him save his friends of the mountains and

the wild places--the haunts of exiles. And the girl, as one by one they

touched her hand at his request, and circled her with their dark forms,

seemed to belong to them too.

"When the--snow melts--the flowers are on that ledge," he whispered with

his eyes closed, "and the birds--not echoes--the echoes are in the

mine--don't be--afraid. I'll go long--and Mowitza."

He was silent for so long that she stooped and whispered to him of

prayer. He opened his eyes and smiled at her.

"Give me--your good wishes--and kiss me, and I'll--risk hell," was the

characteristic answer given so low that she had to watch closely the

lips she kissed.

"And you've kissed me--again! Who said--no compensation?--they--don't

know; we know--and the moonlight, and--yes--mother knows; she thought,

at last--I was not--all bad; not all--little mother! And now--don't be

afraid; I won't go--far--klahowya, my girl--my girl!"

Then one Indian from the circle unslung his rifle from his shoulder and

shattered it with one blow of an axe that lay by the fire. The useless

thing was laid beside what had been Genesee. And the owner, shrouding

his head in his blanket, sat apart from the rest. It was he of the bear

claws; the sworn friend of Lamonti, and the man who had shot him.

* * * * *

At sunset he was laid to rest in the little plateau on Scot's Mountain

that faces the west. He was borne there by the Indians, who buried in

his grave the tomahawk they had resurrected for the whites of Camp

Kootenai. Mowitza, rebelliously impatient, was led riderless by Kalitan.

All military honors were paid him who had received no honors in life,

the rites ending by that volley of sound that seals the grave of a

soldier.

Then the pale-faces turned again to the south, the dark-faces took the

trail to the north, and the sun with a last flickering blaze flooded the

snow with crimson, and died behind the western peaks they had watched

light up one morning.

CHAPTER IX.

"RASHELL OF LAMONTI."

The echoes are no longer silent in Tamahnous Peak. The witchcraft of

silver has killed the old superstition. The "something" in Genesee's

pocket had been a specimen that warranted investigation. The lost tribe

had left enough ore there through the darkness of generations to make

mining a thing profitable. Above those terraces of unknown origin there

is a dwelling-house now, built of that same bewitched stone in which the

echoes sleep; and often there is gathered under its roof a strange

household.

The words of Genesee, "Be good to my Kootenais!" have so far been

remembered by the girl who during the last year of his life filled his

thoughts so greatly. His friends are her friends, and medley as the lot

would appear to others, they are welcome to her. They have helped her

solve the problem of what use she could make of her life. Her relatives

have given up in despair trying to alter her unheard-of manner of

living. The idea is prevalent among them that Rachel's mind, on some

subjects, is really queer--she was always so erratic! They speak to her

of the loneliness of those heights, and she laughs at them. She is never

lonely. She had his word that he would not go far. With her lives old

Davy MacDougall, who helps her much in the mining matters, and Kalitan

is never far off. He is her shadow now, as he once was Genesee's. Indian

women do the work of her home. A school is there for any who care to

learn, and in the lodges of the Kootenais she is never forgotten.

It seemed strange that he who had so few friends in his life should win

her so many by his death. The Indians speak of him now with a sort of

awe, as their white brother whose counsels were so wise, whose courage

was so great; he who forced from the spirits the secret of the lost

mine. He has drifted into tradition as some wonderful creature who was

among them for a while, disappearing at times, but always coming back at

a time of their need.

To Rachel they turn as to something which they must guard--for he said

so. She is to them always "Rashell of Lamonti"--of the mountains.

From the East and South come friends sometimes--letters and faces of

people who knew him; Miss Fred, and her husband, and the Major, who is a

stanch friend and admirer of the eccentric girl who was once a rebel in

his camp; and in reminiscences the roughness of his Kootenai chief of

scouts is swathed in the gray veil of the past--only the

lightning-flashes of courage are photographed in the veteran's memory.

The Stuart and his wife and boy come there sometimes in the summer; and

the girl and little Jack, who are very fond of each other, ride over the

places where the other Jack Stuart rode--nameless for so long.

As for Prince Charlie, his natural affection for children amounts to

adoration of the boy. Rachel wonders sometimes if the ideal his remorse

had fostered for so long was filled at last by the girl whom he had left

a delicately tinted apple-blossom and found a delicate type of the

invalid, whose ill-health never exceeds fashionable indisposition. If

not, no word or sign from him shows it. The pretty, ideal phases of

domestic love and life that he used to write of, are not so ready to his

pen as they once were through his dreams and remorse. Much changed for

him are those northern hills, but they still have a fascination for him

and he writes of them a good deal.

"It is the witchcraft of the place, or else it is you, Rachel," he said,

once. "Both help me. When life grows old and stale in civilization, I

come up here and straightway am young again. I can understand now how

you helped Jack."

His wife--a pretty little woman with a gently appealing air--never

really understands Rachel, though she and Tillie are great friends; but,

despite Tillie's praise, Annie never can discover what there is in the

girl for "Charlie and all the other men to like so much--and even poor,

dear Jack, who must have been in love with her to leave her a silver

mine." To Annie she seems rather clever, but with so little affection!

and not even sympathetic, as most girls are. She heard of Rachel's pluck

and bravery; but that is so near to boldness!--as heroes are to

adventurers; and Annie is a very prim little woman herself. She quotes

"my husband" a good deal, and rates his work with the first writers of

the age.

The work has grown earnest; the lessons of Rachel's prophecy have crept

into it. He has in so many ways justified them--achieved more than he

hoped; but he never will write anything more fascinating than the

changeless youth in his own eyes, or the serious tenderness of his own

mouth when he smiles.

"Prince Charlie is a rare, fine lad," old Davy remarked at the end of an

autumn, as he and Rachel watched their visitors out of sight down the

valley; "a man fine enough to be brother to Genesee, an' I ne'er was

wearied o' him till I hearkened to that timorous fine lady o' his

lilting him into the chorus o' every song she sung. By her tellin' she's

the first o' the wives that's ever had a husband."

"But she is not a fine lady at all," contradicted Rachel; "and she's a

very affectionate, very good little woman. You are set against her

because of that story of long ago--and that is hardly fair, Davy

MacDougall."

"Well, then, I am not, lass. It's little call I have to judge children,

but I own I'm ower cranky when I think o' the waste o' a man's life for

a bit pigeon like that--an' a man like my lad was! The prize was no'

worth the candle that give light to it. A man's life is a big thing to

throw away, lass, an' I see nothing in that bit o' daintiness to warrant

it. To me it's a woeful waste."

The girl walked on beside him through the fresh, sweet air of the

morning that was filled with crisp kisses--the kisses that warn the wild

things of the Frost-King's coming. She was separated so slightly from

the wild things herself that she was growing to understand them in a new

spirit--through a sympathy touched less by curiosity than of old. She

thought of that man, who slept across on Scot's Mountian, in sight of

Tamahnous Peak; how he had understood them!--not through the head, but

the heart. Through some reflected light of feeling she had lived those

last days of his life at a height above her former level. She had seen

in the social outlaw who loved her a soul that, woman-like, she placed

above where she knelt. Perhaps it had been the uncivilized heroism,

perhaps the unselfish, deliberate sacrifice, appealing to a

hero-worshiper. Something finer in nature than she had ever been touched

by in a more civilized life had come to her through him in those last

days--not through the man as men knew him, and not through the love he

had borne her--but through the spirit she thought she saw there.

It may have been in part an illusion--women have so many--but it was

strong in her. It raised up her life to touch the thing she had placed

on the heights, and something of the elation that had come to him

through that last sacrifice filled her, and forbade her return into the

narrowed valleys of existence.

His wasted life! It had been given at last to the wild places he loved.

It had left its mark on the humanity of them, and the mark had not been

a mean one. The girl, thinking of what it had done for her, wondered

often if the other lives of the valley that winter could live on without

carrying indelible coloring from grateful, remorseful emotions born

there. She did not realize how transient emotions are in some people;

and then she had grown to idealize him so greatly. She fancied herself

surely one of many, while really she was one alone.

"Yes, lass--a woeful waste," repeated the old man; and her thoughts

wandered back to their starting-place.

"No!" she answered with the sturdy certainty of faith. "The prodigality

there was not wastefulness, and was not without a method--not a method

of his own, but that something beyond us we call God or Fate. The lives

he lived or died for may seem of mighty little consequence individually,

but what is, is more than likely to be right, Davy MacDougall, even if

we can't see it from our point of view." Then, after a little, she

added, "He is not the first lion that has died to feed dogs--there was

that man of Nazareth."

Davy MacDougall stopped, looking at her with fond, aged eyes that shone

perplexedly from under his shaggy brows.

"You're a rare, strange lass, Rachel Hardy," he said at last, "an' long

as I've known ye, I'm not ower certain that I know ye at all. The lad

used to be a bit like that at times, but when I see ye last at the

night, I'm ne'er right certain what I'll find ye in the mornin'."

"You'll never find me far from that, at any rate," and she motioned up

the "Hill of the Witches," and on a sunny level a little above them

Mowitza and Kalitan were waiting.

"Then, lass, ye'll ne'er tak' leave o' the Kootenai hills?"

"I think not. I should smother now in the life those people are going

to," and she nodded after the departing guests who were going back to

the world. Then her eyes turned from the mists of the valleys to the

whispering peace of cedars that guard Scot's Mountain.

"No, Davy, I'll never leave the hills."

KLOSHE KAH-KWA.

JOHN FOX, JR'S. STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS

THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE.

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree

that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine

lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he

finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the

foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and

the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder

chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine."

THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come." It

is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest from which often

springs the flower of civilization.

"Chad," the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he

came--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood,

seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and

mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif,

by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the

mountains.

A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND.

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of

moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the

heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two

impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's"

charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the

love making of the mountaineers.

Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of

Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives.

NOVELS OF FRONTIER LIFE BY WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

MAVERICKS.

A tale of the western frontier, where the "rustler," whose depredations

are so keenly resented by the early settlers of the range, abounds. One

of the sweetest love stories ever told.

A TEXAS RANGER.

How a member of the most dauntless border police force carried law into

the mesquit, saved the life of an innocent man after a series of

thrilling adventures, followed a fugitive to Wyoming, and then passed

through deadly peril to ultimate happiness.

WYOMING.

In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured the

breezy charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the

frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor.

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA.

The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics and

mining industries are the religion of the country. The political

contest, the love scene, and the fine character drawing give this story

great strength and charm.

BUCKY O'CONNOR.

Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with

the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing

fascination of style and plot.

CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT.

A story of Arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter

feud between cattle-men and sheep-herders. The heroine is a most unusual

woman and her love story reaches a culmination that is fittingly

characteristic of the great free West.

BRAND BLOTTERS.

A story of the Cattle Range. This story brings out the turbid life of

the frontier, with all its engaging dash and vigor, with a charming love

interest running through its 320 pages.

JACK LONDON'S NOVELS

JOHN BARLEYCORN. Illustrated by H. T. Dunn.

This remarkable book is a record of the author's own amazing

experiences. This big, brawny world rover, who has been acquainted with

alcohol from boyhood, comes out boldly against John Barleycorn. It is a

string of exciting adventures, yet it forcefully conveys an

unforgettable idea and makes a typical Jack London book.

THE VALLEY OF THE MOON. Frontispiece by George Harper.

The story opens in the city slums where Billy Roberts, teamster and

ex-prize fighter, and Saxon Brown, laundry worker, meet and love and

marry. They tramp from one end of California to the other, and in the

Valley of the Moon find the farm paradise that is to be their salvation.

BURNING DAYLIGHT. Four illustrations.

The story of an adventurer who went to Alaska and laid the foundations

of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. Bringing his fortunes to

the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and

recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. He then starts out as a

merciless exploiter on his own account. Finally he takes to drinking and

becomes a picture of degeneration. About this time he falls in love with

his stenographer and wins her heart but not her hand and then--but read

the story!

A SON OF THE SUN. Illustrated by A. O. Fischer and C. W. Ashley.

David Grief was once a light-haired, blue-eyed youth who came from

England to the South Seas in search of adventure. Tanned like a native

and as lithe as a tiger, he became a real son of the sun. The life

appealed to him and he remained and became very wealthy.

THE CALL OF THE WILD. Illustrations by Philip R. Goodwin and Charles

Livingston Bull. Decorations by Charles E. Hooper.

A book of dog adventures as exciting as any man's exploits could be.

Here is excitement to stir the blood and here is picturesque color to

transport the reader to primitive scenes.

THE SEA WOLF. Illustrated by W. J. Aylward.

Told by a man whom Fate suddenly swings from his fastidious life into

the power of the brutal captain of a sealing schooner. A novel of

adventure warmed by a beautiful love episode that every reader will hail

with delight.

WHITE FANG. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull.

"White Fang" is part dog, part wolf and all brute, living in the frozen

north; he gradually comes under the spell of man's companionship, and

surrenders all at the last in a fight with a bull dog. Thereafter he is

man's loving slave.

ZANE GREY'S NOVELS

THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS

Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dunton.

Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent Mexican

border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which

becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her

property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is

captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful

close.

DESERT GOLD

Illustrated by Douglas Duer.

Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the

desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no

farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the

border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors

had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine.

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

Illustrated by Douglas Duer.

A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon

authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch

owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible

hand of the Mormon Church to break her will.

THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN

Illustrated with photograph reproductions.

This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones,

known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona desert

and of a hunt in "that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons

and giant pines." It is a fascinating story.

THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT

Jacket in color. Frontispiece.

This big human drama is played in the Painted Desert. A lovely girl, who

has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The

Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second

wife of one of the Mormons--

Well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story.

BETTY ZANE

Illustrated by Louis F. Grant.

This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful

young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. Life

along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the

beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Fort, and Betty's

final race for life, make up this never-to-be-forgotten story.

THE NOVELS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL

THE INSIDE OF THE CUP. Illustrated by Howard Giles.

The Reverend John Hodder is called to a fashionable church in a

middle-western city. He knows little of modern problems and in his

theology is as orthodox as the rich men who control his church could

desire. But the facts of modern life are thrust upon him; an awakening

follows and in the end he works out a solution.

A FAR COUNTRY. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.

This novel is concerned with big problems of the day. As The Inside of

the Cup gets down to the essentials in its discussion of religion, so

A Far Country deals in a story that is intense and dramatic, with

other vital issues confronting the twentieth century.

A MODERN CHRONICLE. Illustrated by J. H. Gardner Soper.

This, Mr. Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine,

is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It

is frankly a modern love story.

MR. CREWE'S CAREER. Illustrated by A. I. Keller and Kinneys.

A new England state is under the political domination of a railway and

Mr. Crewe, a millionaire, seizes a moment when the cause of the people

is being espoused by an ardent young attorney, to further his own

interest in a political way. The daughter of the railway president plays

no small part in the situation.

THE CROSSING. Illustrated by S. Adamson and L. Baylis.

Describing the battle of Fort Moultrie, the blazing of the Kentucky

wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of followers in

Illinois, the beginning of civilization along the Ohio and Mississippi,

and the treasonable schemes against Washington.

CONISTON. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn.

A deft blending of love and politics. A New Englander is the hero, a

crude man who rose to political prominence by his own powers, and then

surrendered all for the love of a woman.

THE CELEBRITY. An episode.

An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of personalities

between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman. It is the purest,

keenest fun--and is American to the core.

THE CRISIS. Illustrated with scenes from the Photo-Play.

A book that presents the great crisis in our national life with splendid

power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a patriotism that are

inspiring.

RICHARD CARVEL. Illustrated by Malcolm Frazer.

An historical novel which gives a real and vivid picture of Colonial

times, and is good, clean, spirited reading in all its phases and

interesting throughout.

STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER

LADDIE.

Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.

This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story

is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it

is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs

of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie, the

older brother whom Little Sister adores, and the Princess, an English

girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family

there hangs a mystery. There is a wedding midway in the book and a

double wedding at the close.

THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs.

"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who

draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the

book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be

notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the

Harvester's whole being realizes that this is the highest point of life

which has come to him--there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic

quality.

FRECKLES. Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford.

Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he

takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great

Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to

the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The

Angel" are full of real sentiment.

A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.

Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda.

The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of

the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness

towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of

her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and

unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.

AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.

Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp.

The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The

story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love.

The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and

its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all.