That Girl Montana

by Ryan, Marah Ellis

  “You mean the very fine Mr. Haydon, who had curly hair and looked like me?” she asked, ironically. “Yes, I’ve heard the women folks talking about him a good deal, when they thought me asleep. Old Akkomi scared him a little, too, didn’t he?”

  “So, you have heard?” he asked, in surprise. “Well, yes, he does look a little like you; it’s the hair, I think. But I don’t see why you utter his name with so much contempt, ’Tana.”

  “Maybe not; but I’ve heard the name of Haydon before to-day, and I have a grudge against it.”

  “But not this Haydon.”

  “I don’t know which Haydon. I never saw any of them—don’t know as I want to. I guess this one is almost too fine for Kootenai country people, anyway.”

  “But that is where you are wrong, entirely wrong, ’Tana,” he hastened to explain. “He was very much interested in you—very much, indeed; asked lots of questions about you, and—and here is what I wanted to speak of. When he went away, he gave me this letter for you. I imagine he wants to help make arrangements for you when you go East, have you know nice people and all that. You see, ’Tana, his daughter is about your age, and looks just a little as you do sometimes; and I think he wants to do something for you. It’s an odd thing for him to take so strong an interest in any stranger; but they are the very best people you could possibly know if you go to Philadelphia.”

  “Maybe if you would let me see the letter myself, I could tell better whether I wanted to know them or not,” she said, and Lyster handed it to her without another word.

  It was a rather long letter, two closely-written sheets, and he could not understand the little contemptuous smile with which she opened it. Haydon, the great financier, had seemed to him a very wonderful personage when he was ’Tana’s age.

  The girl was not so indifferent as she tried to appear. Her fingers trembled a little, though her mouth grew set and angry as she read the carefully kind words of Mr. Haydon.

  “It is rather late in the day for them to come with offers to help me,” she said, bitterly. “I can help myself now; but if they had looked for me a year ago—two or three years ago—”

  “Looked for you!” he exclaimed, with a sort of impatient wonder. “Why, my dear girl, who would even think of hunting for little white girls in these forests? Don’t be foolishly resentful now that people want to be nice to you. You could not expect attention from people before they were aware of your existence.”

  “But they did know of my existence!” she answered, curtly. “Oh! you needn’t stare at me like that, Mr. Max Lyster! I know what I’m talking about. I have the very shaky honor of being a relation of your fine gentleman from the East. I thought it when I heard the name, but did not suppose he would know it. And I’m not too proud of it, either, as you seem to think I ought to be.”

  “But they are one of our best families—”

  “Then your worst must be pretty bad,” she interrupted. “I know just about what they are.”

  “But ’Tana—how does it come—”

  “I won’t answer any questions about it, Max, so don’t ask,” and she folded up the letter and tore it into very little pieces, which she let fall into the water. “I am not going to claim the relationship or their hospitality, and I would just as soon you forgot that I acknowledged it. I didn’t mean to tell, but that letter vexed me.”

  “Look here, ’Tana,” and Lyster caught her hand again. “I can’t let you act like this. They can be of much more help to you socially than all your money. If the family are related to you, and offer you attention, you can’t afford to ignore it. You do not realize now how much their attention will mean; but when you are older, you will regret losing it. Let me advise you—let me—”

  “Oh, hush!” she said, closing her eyes, wearily. “I am tired—tired! What difference does it make to you—why need you care?”

  “May I tell you?” and he looked at her so strangely, so gravely, that her eyes opened in expectation of—she knew not what.

  “I did not mean to let you know so soon, ’Tana,” and his clasp of her hand grew closer; “but, it is true—I love you. Everything that concerns you makes a difference to me. Now do you understand?”

  “You!—Max—”

  “Don’t draw your hand away. Surely you guessed—a little? I did not know myself how much I cared till you came so near dying. Then I knew I could not bear to let you go. And—and you care a little too, don’t you! Speak to me!”

  “Let us go home,” she answered in a low voice, and tried to draw her fingers away. She liked him—yes; but—

  “Tana, won’t you speak? Oh, my dear, dear one, when you were so ill, so very ill, you knew no one else, but you turned to me. You went asleep with your cheek against my hand, and more than once, ’Tana, with your hand clasping mine. Surely that was enough to make me hope—for you did like me a little, then.”

  “Yes, I—liked you,” but she turned her head away, that he could not see her flushed face. “You were good to me, but I did not know—I could not guess—” and she broke down as though about to cry, and his own eyes were full of tenderness. She appealed to him now as she had never done in her days of brightness and laughter.

  “Listen to me,” he said, pleadingly. “I won’t worry you. I know you are too weak and ill to decide yet about your future. I don’t ask you to answer me now. Wait. Go to school, as I know you intend to do; but don’t forget me. After the school is over you can decide. I will wait with all patience. I would not have told you now, but I wanted you to know I was interested in the answer you would give Haydon. I wanted you to know that I would not for the world advise you, but for your best interests. Won’t you believe—”

  “I believe you; but I don’t know what to say to you. You are different from me—your people are different. And of my people you know nothing, nothing at all, and—”

  “And it makes no difference,” he interrupted. “I know you have had a lot of trouble for a little girl, or your family have had trouble you are sensitive about. I don’t know what it is, but it makes no difference—not a bit. I will never question about it, unless you prefer to tell of your own accord. Oh, my dear! if some day you could be my wife, I would help you forget all your childish troubles and your unpleasant life.”

  “Let us go home,” she said, “you are good to me, but I am so tired.”

  He obediently turned the canoe, and at that moment voices came to them from toward the river—ringing voices of men.

  “It is possibly Mr. Haydon and others,” he exclaimed, after listening a moment. “We have been expecting them for days. That was why I could no longer put off giving you the letter.”

  “I know,” she said, and her face flushed and paled a little, as the voices came closer. He could see she nervously dreaded the meeting.

  “Shall I get the canoe back to camp before they come?” he asked kindly; but she shook her head.

  “You can’t, for they move fast,” she answered, as she listened. “They would see us; and, if he is with them, he—would think I was afraid.”

  He let the canoe drift again, and watched her moody face, which seemed to grow more cold with each moment that the strangers came closer. He was filled with surprise at all she had said of Haydon and of the letter. Who would have dreamed that she—the little Indian-dressed guest of Akkomi’s camp—would be connected with the most exclusive family he knew in the East? The Haydon family was one he had been especially interested in only a year ago, because of Mr. Haydon’s very charming daughter. Miss Haydon, however, had a clever and ambitious mamma, who persisted in keeping him at a safe distance.

  Max Lyster, with his handsome face and unsettled prospects, was not the brilliant match her hopes aspired to. Pretty Margaret Haydon had, in all obedience, refused him dances and affected not to see his efforts to be near her. But he knew she did see; and one little bit of comfort he had taken West with him was the fancy that her refusals were never voluntary affairs, and that she had looked at him as he had never
known her to look at another man.

  Well, that was a year ago, and he had just asked another girl to marry him—a girl who did not look at him at all, but whose eyes were on the swift-flowing current—troubled eyes, that made him long to take care of her.

  “Won’t you speak to me at all?” he asked. “I will do anything to help you, ’Tana—anything at all.”

  She nodded her head slowly.

  “Yes—now,” she answered. “So would Mr. Haydon, Max.”

  “’Tana! do you mean—” His face flushed hotly, and he looked at her for the first time with anger in his face.

  She put out her hand in a tired, pleading way.

  “I only mean that now, when I have been lucky enough to help myself, it seems as if every one thinks I need looking after so much more than they used to. Maybe because I am not strong yet—maybe so; I don’t know.” Then she smiled and looked at him curiously.

  “But I made a mistake when I said ’every one,’ didn’t I? For Dan never comes near me any more.”

  Then the strange canoes came in sight and very close to them, as they turned a bend in the creek. There were three large boats—one carrying freight, one filled with new men for the works, and in the other—the foremost one—was Mr. Haydon, and a tall, thin, middle-aged stranger.

  “Uncle Seldon!” exclaimed Lyster, with animation, and held the canoe still in the water, that the other might come close, and in a whisper he said:

  “The one to the right is Mr. Haydon.”

  He glanced at her and saw she was making a painful effort at self-control.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We will just speak, and drift on past them.”

  But when they called greeting to each other, and the Indian boatman was told to send their craft close to the little camp canoe, she raised her head and looked very levelly across the stranger, who had hair so like her own, and spoke to the Indian who paddled their boat as though he were the only one there to notice.

  “Plucky!” decided Mr. Haydon, “and stubborn;” but he kept those thoughts to himself, and said aloud: “My dear young lady, I am indeed pleased to see you so far recovered since my last visit. I presume you know who I am,” and he looked at her in a smiling, confidential way.

  “Yes, I know who you are. Your name is Haydon, and—there is a piece of your letter.”

  She picked up a fragment of paper that had fallen at her feet, and flung it out from her on the water. Mr. Haydon affected not to see the pettish act, but turned to his companion.

  “Will you allow me, Miss Rivers, to introduce another member of our firm? This is Mr. Seldon. Seldon, this is the young girl I told you of.”

  “I knew it before you spoke,” said the other man, who looked at her with a great deal of interest, and a great deal of kindness. “My child, I was your mother’s friend long ago. Won’t you let me be yours?”

  She reached out her hand to him, and the quick tears came to her eyes. She trusted without question the earnest gray eyes of the speaker, and turned from her own uncle to the uncle of Max.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIX.

  THE MAN IN AKKOMI’S CLOAK.

  “My dear fellow, there is, of course, no way of thanking you sufficiently for your care of her; but I can only say I am mighty glad to know a man like you.”

  It was Mr. Seldon who said so, and Dan Overton looked embarrassed and deprecating under the praise he had to accept.

  “It is all right for you to make a fuss over it, Seldon,” he returned; “but you know, as well as you know dinner time, that you would have done no less if you had found a young girl anywhere without a home—and especially if you found her in an Indian camp.”

  “Did she give you any information as to how she came to be there?”

  Overton looked at him good-naturedly, but shook his head.

  “I can’t give you any information about that,” he answered. “If you want to know anything of her previous to meeting her here, she will have to tell you.”

  “But she won’t. I can’t understand it; for I can see no need of mystery. I knew her mother when she was a girl like ’Tana, and—”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I did. So now, perhaps, you will understand why I take such an interest in her—why Mr. Haydon takes an interest in her. Simply because she is his niece.”

  “Oh, she is—is she? And he came here, found her dying, or next door to it, and never claimed her.”

  “No; that is a little way of his,” acknowledged his partner. “If she had really died, he never would have said a word about it, for it would have caused him a lot of troublesome explanation at home. But I guess he knew I would be likely to come across her. She is the very image of what her mother was. He told me the whole story of how he found her here, and all. And now he wants to do the proper thing and take her home with him.”

  “The devil he does!” growled Overton. “Well, why do you come to me about it?”

  “Your influence with her was one thing,” answered Mr. Seldon, with a dubious smile at the dark face before him. “This protégée of yours has a will of her own, it seems, and refuses utterly to acknowledge her aristocratic relations, refuses to be a part of her uncle’s household; and we want your influence toward changing her mind.”

  “Well, you’ll never get it,” and the tone was decided as the words. “If she says she is no relation to anybody, I’ll back her up in it, and not ask her her reasons, either. If she doesn’t want to go with Mr. Haydon, she is the only one I will allow to decide, unless he brings a legal order from some court, and I might try to hinder him even then. She willingly came under my guardianship, and when she leaves it, it must be willingly.”

  “Oh, of course there will be no coercion about the matter,” explained Mr. Seldon, hastily. “But don’t you, yourself, think it would be a decided advantage for her to live for a while with her own relatives?”

  “I am in no position to judge. I don’t know her relatives. I don’t know why it is that she has not been taken care of by them long ago; and I am not asking any questions. She knows, and that is enough; and I am sure her reasons for not going would satisfy me.”

  “Well, you are a fine specimen to come to for influence,” observed the other. “She has a grudge against Haydon, that is the obstacle—a grudge, because he quarreled with her mother long ago. I thought that as you have done so much for her, your word might have weight in showing her the folly of it.”

  “My word would have no more weight than yours,” he answered, curtly. “All I have done for her amounts to nothing; and I’ve an idea that if she wanted me to know her family affairs, she would tell me.”

  “Which, interpreted, means that I had better be at other business than gossiping,” said Mr. Seldon, with much good humor. “Well, you are a fine pair, and something alike, too—you goldfinders! She snubbed Max for trying to persuade her, and you snub me. As a last resort, I think I shall try to get that old Indian into our lobbying here. He is her next great friend, I hear.”

  “I haven’t seen him in camp to-day, for a wonder; but he is sure to be around before night.”

  “But, you see, we are to go on up to the new works on the lake to-day, and be back day after to-morrow. I wish you, too, could go up to-morrow, for I would like your judgment about some changes we expect to make. Could you leave here for twenty-four hours?”

  “I’ll try,” promised Overton. “But the new men from the Ferry will be up to-day or to-morrow, so I may not reach there until you are about ready to start back.”

  “Come anyway, if you can, I don’t seem to get much chance to talk to you here in camp—maybe I could on the river. You may be in a more reasonable mood about ’Tana by that time, and try to influence her to partake of civilization.”

  “‘Civilization!’ Oh, yes, of course, you imagine it all lies east of the Appalachian range,” remarked Overton, slightingly. “I expect that from a man of Haydon’s stamp, but not from you.”

  Seldon only laug
hed.

  “One would think you had been born and bred out here in the West,” he remarked, “while you are really only an importation. But what is that racket about?”

  For screeches were sounding from the cabin—cries, feminine and frightened.

  Overton and Seldon started for it, as did several of the workmen, but their haste slackened as they saw ’Tana leaning against a doorway and laughing, while the squaw stood near her, chuckling a little as a substitute for merriment.

  But there were two others within the cabin who were by no means merry—the two cousins, who were standing huddled together on the couch, uttering spasmodic screeches at every movement made by a little gray snake on the floor.

  It had crept in at a crevice, and did not know how to make its escape from the noisy shelter it had found. Its fright was equal to that of the women, for it appeared decidedly restless, and each uneasy movement of it was a signal for fresh screams.

  “Oh, Mr. Overton! I beg of you, kill the horrible reptile!” moaned Miss Slocum, who at that moment was as indifferent to the proprieties as Mrs. Huzzard, and was displaying considerable white hosiery and black gaiter tops.

  “Oh, lawsy! It is coming this way again. Ooh—ooh—h!” and Mrs. Huzzard did a little dance from one foot to the other, in a very ecstasy of fear. “Oh, Lavina, I’ll never forgive myself for advising you to come out to this Idaho country! Oh, Lord! won’t somebody kill it?”

  “Why, there is no need to fear that little thing,” said Overton. “Really, it is not a snake to bite—no more harm in it than in a mouse.”

  “A mouse!” they both shrieked. “Oh, please take it away.”

  Just then Akkomi came in through the other cabin, and, hearing the shrieks, simply stooped and picked up the little stranger in his hand, holding it that they might see how harmless it was.