But, instead of pacifying them, as he had kindly intended, they only cowered against the wall, too horrified even to scream, while they gazed at the old Indian, as at something just from the infernal regions.
“Lord, have mercy on our souls,” muttered Lavina, in a sepulchral tone, and with pallid, almost moveless, lips.
“Forever and ever, amen,” added Lorena Jane, clutching her drapery a little closer, and a little higher.
And not until Overton persuaded Akkomi to throw the frightened little thing away did they consent to move from their pedestal. Even then it was with fear and trembling, and many an awful glance toward the placid old Indian, who smoked his pipe and never glanced toward them.
“Never again will I sleep in that room—not if I die for it!” announced Mrs. Huzzard, and Miss Slocum was of the same mind.
“But the cabin is as safe as a tent,” said ’Tana, persuasively, “and, really, it was not a dangerous snake.”
“Ooh—h! I beg that you will not mention it,” shivered Miss Slocum. “For my part, I don’t expect to sleep anywhere after this terrible experience. But I’ll go wherever Lorena Jane goes, and do what I can to comfort and protect her, while she rests.”
Akkomi sat on Harris’ doorstep, and smoked, while they argued on the dangers around them, and were satisfied only when Overton put a tent at their disposal. They proceeded to have hammocks swung in it on poles set for the purpose, as they could feel safe on no bed resting on the ground.
“But, really, my conscience troubles me about leaving you here alone, ’Tana,” said Mrs. Huzzard, and Overton also looked at her as if interested in her comfort.
“Well, your conscience had better give itself a rest, if that is all it has to disturb it,” she answered. “I don’t care the least bit about staying alone—I rather like it; though, if I need any one, I’ll have Flap-Jacks stay.”
So Overton left them to their arrangements, and said nothing to ’Tana; but as Seldon and Haydon were about to embark, he spoke to the former.
“I may not be able to get up there after all, as I may feel it necessary to be here at night, so don’t wait for me.”
“All right, Overton; but we’d like to have you.”
After the others had left the cabin, Akkomi still remained, and the girl watched him uneasily but did not speak. She talked to Harris, telling him of the funny actions of the two frightened women, but all the time she talked and tried to entertain the helpless man, it was with an evident effort, for the dark old Indian’s face at the door was constantly drawing her attention.
When she finally entered her own room, he appeared at the entrance, and, after a careful glance, to see that no one was near, he entered and spoke:
“’Tana, it is now two suns since we talked. Will you go to-day in my boat for a little ways?”
“No,” she said, angrily. “Go home to your tepee, Akkomi, and tell the man there I am sorry he is not dead. I never will see him again. I go away from this place now—very soon—maybe this week. What becomes of him I do not care, and it will be long before I come back.”
He muttered some words of regret, and she turned to him more kindly.
“Yes, I know, Akkomi, you are my good friend. You think it is right to do what you are doing now. Maybe it is; maybe I am wrong. But I will not be different in this matter—never—never!”
“If he should come here—”
“He would not dare. There are people here he had better fear. Give him the names of Seldon and of Haydon.”
“He knows; but it is the new miners he fears most; they come from all parts. He wants money.”
“Let him work for it, like an honest man,” she said, curtly. “Don’t talk of it again. I will not go outside the camp alone, and I will not listen to any more words about it. Now mind that!”
In the other cabin, Harris listened intently to each word uttered. His eyes fairly blazed in his eagerness to hear ’Tana’s final decision. But when Akkomi slouched past his door, and peered in, with his sharp, quick eyes, he had relapsed again into the apathetic state habitual to him. To all appearances he had not heard their words, and the old Indian walked thoughtfully past the tents and out into the timber.
Lyster called some light greeting to him, but he barely looked up and made no reply whatever. His thoughts were evidently on other things than camp sociabilities.
It was dark when he returned, and his fit of thoughtfulness was yet upon him, for he spoke to no one. Overton, who had been talking to Harris, noticed him smoking beside the door as he came out.
“You had better bring your camp down here,” he remarked, ironically. “Well, for to-night you will have to spread your blanket in this room if Harris doesn’t object. That is what I am to do, for I’ve given up my quarters to the ladies, who are afraid of snakes.”
Akkomi nodded, and then Overton moved nearer the door again.
“Jim, I may not be back for an hour or so. I am going either on the water or up on the mountain for a little while. Don’t lie awake for me, and I’ll send a fellow in to look after you.”
Harris nodded, and ’Tana, in her own room, heard Overton’s steps die away in the night. He was going on the water or on the mountains—the places she loved to go, and dared not.
She felt like calling after him to wait to take her with him once more, and did rise and go to the door, but no farther.
Lights were gleaming all along the little stream; laughter and men’s voices came to her across the level. Her own corner of the camp looked very dark and shadowy in comparison. But she turned back to it with a sigh.
“You may go, Flap-Jacks,” she said to the squaw. “I don’t mind being alone, but first fix the bed of Harris.”
She noticed Akkomi outside the door, but did not speak to him. She heard the miner enter the other cabin and assist Harris to his couch and then depart. She wondered a little that the old Indian still sat there smoking, instead of spreading his blanket, as Overton had invited him to do.
A book of poems, presented to her by Lyster, was so engrossing, however, that she forgot the old fellow, until a movement at the door aroused her, and she turned to find the silent smoker inside her cabin.
But it was not Akkomi, though it was the cloak of Akkomi that fell from his shoulders.
It was a man dressed as an Indian, but his speech was the speech of a white man, as he frowned on her white, startled face.
“So, my fine lady, I’ve found you at last, even if you have got too high and mighty to come when I sent for you,” he said, growlingly. “But I’ll change your tune very quick for you.”
“Don’t forget that I can change yours,” she retorted. “A word from me, and you know there is not a man in this camp wouldn’t help land you where you belong—in a prison, or at the end of a rope.”
“Oh, no,” and he grimaced in a sardonic way. “I’m not a bit afraid of that—not a bit in the world. You can’t afford it. These high-toned friends you’ve been making might drop off a little if they heard your old record.”
“And who made it for me?” she demanded. “You! You’ve been a curse to every one connected with you. In that other room is a man who might be strong and well to-day but for you. And there is that girl buried over there by the picture rocks of Arrow Lake. Think of my mother, dragged to death through the slums of ’Frisco! And me—”
“And you with a gold mine, or the price of one,” he concluded—“plenty of money and plenty of friends. That is about the facts of your case—friends, from millionaires down to that digger I saw you with the other night.”
“Don’t you dare say a word against him!” she exclaimed, threateningly.
“Oh, that’s the way the land lies, is it?” he asked, with an ugly leer at her. “And that is why you were playing ’meet me by moonlight alone,’ that night when I saw you together at the spring. Well, I think your money might help you to some one besides a married man.”
“A married man?” she gasped. “Dan!”
“
Dan, it is,” he answered, insolently. “But you needn’t faint away on that account. I have other use for you—I want some money.”
“You are telling that lie about him because you think it will trouble me,” she said, regarding his painted face closely and giving no heed to his demand. “You know it is not true.”
“About the marriage? I’ll swear—”
“I would not believe your oath for anything.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t? Well, now, what if I prove to you, right in this camp, that I know his wife?”
“His wife?” She sat down on the side of the couch, and all the cabin seemed whirling around her.
“Well—a girl he married. You may call her what you please. She had been called a good many things before he picked her up. Humph! Now that he has struck it rich, some one ought to let her know. She’d make the dollars fly.”
“It is not true! It is not true!” she murmured to herself, as if by the words she could drive away the possibility of it.
He appeared to enjoy the sensation he had created.
“It is true,” he answered—“every word of it, and he has been keeping quiet about it, has he? Well, see here. You don’t believe me—do you? Now, while I was waiting there at the door, a man came in to put your paralyzed partner to bed. The man was Jake Emmons—used to hang out at Spokane. He knew Lottie Snyder before this Overton did—and after Overton married her, too, I guess. You ask him anything you want to know of it. He can tell you—if he will.”
She did not answer. She feared, as he talked, that it was true; and she longed for him to go away, that she could think alone. The hot blood burned in her cheeks, as she remembered that night by the Twin Springs. The humiliation of it, if it proved true!
“But, see here, ’Tana. I didn’t come here to talk about your virtuous ranger. I want some money—enough to cut the country. It ain’t any more than fair, anyway, that you divide with me, for if it hadn’t been for that sneaking hound in the other room, half of this find would have been mine a year ago.”
“It will do more good where it is,” she answered. “He did right not to trust you. And if he were able to walk, you would not be allowed to live many minutes within reach of him.”
“Oh, yes; I know he was trailing me,” he answered, indifferently, “but it was no hard trick to keep out of his road. I suppose you let him know you approve of his feelings toward me.”
“Yes, I would load a gun for him to use on you if he were able to hold it,” she answered, and he seemed to think her words amusing.
“You have mighty little regard for your duty to me,” he observed.
“Duty? I can’t owe you any duty when I never received any from you. I am nearly seventeen, and in all the years I remember you, I can’t recall any good act you have ever done for me.”
“Nearly seventeen,” and he smiled at her in the way she hated. “Didn’t your new uncle, Haydon, tell you better than that? You are nearly eighteen years old.”
“Eighteen!” and she rose in astonishment. “I?”
“You—though you don’t look it. You always were small for your age, so I just told you a white lie about it in order to manage you better. But that is over; I don’t care what you do in the future. All I want of you is money to get to South America; so fix it up for me.”
“I ought to refuse, and call them in to arrest you.”
“But you won’t,” he rejoined. “You can’t afford it.”
He watched her, though, with some uncertainty, as she sat silent, thinking.
“No, I can’t afford it,” she said, at last. “I will be doing wrong to help you, just as if I let a poison snake loose where people travel—for that is what you are. But I am not strong enough to let these friends go and start over again; so I will help you away this once.”
He drew a breath of relief, and gathered up his blanket.
“That is the way to talk. You’ve got a level head—”
“That will do,” she said, curtly. “I don’t want praise from a coward, a thief, or a murderer. You are all three. I have no money here. You will have to come again for it to-morrow night.”
“A trick—is it?”
“It is no trick. I haven’t got it, that is all. Maybe I can’t get it in money, but I will get it in free gold by to-morrow at dusk. I will put it here under the pillow, and will manage to keep the rest away at that time. You can come as you came this evening, and get it; but I will neither take it nor send it to you. You will have to risk your freedom and your life to come for it. But while I can’t quite decide to give you up or to kill you, myself, I hope some one else will.”
“Hope what you please,” he returned, indifferently. “So long as you get the dust for me, I can stand your opinion. And you will have it here?”
“I will have it here.”
“I trust you only because I know you can’t afford to go back on me,” he said, as he wrapped the blanket around him, and dropped his taller form to the height of Akkomi. “It is a bargain, then, my dear. Good-night.”
“I don’t wish you a good-night,” she answered. “I hope I shall never see you alive again.”
And she never did.
* * *
CHAPTER XX.
’TANA’S ENGAGEMENT
“And she wants a thousand dollars in money or free gold—a thousand dollars to-day?”
“No use asking me what for, Dan, for I don’t know,” confessed Lyster. “I can’t see why she don’t tell you herself; but you know she has been a little queer since the fever—childish, whimsical, and all that. Maybe as she has not yet handled any specie from your bonanza, she wants some only to play with, and assure herself it is real.”
“Less than a thousand in money and dust would do for a plaything,” remarked Overton. “Of course she has a right to get what she wants; but that amount will be of no use to her here in camp, where there is not a thing in the world to spend it for.”
“Maybe she wants to pension off some of her Indian friends before she leaves,” suggested Max—“old Akkomi and Flap-Jacks, perhaps. I am a little like Miss Slocum in my wonder as to how she endures them, though, of course, the squaw is a necessity.”
“Oh, well, she was not brought up in the world of Miss Slocum—or your world, either,” answered Overton. “You should make allowance for that.”
“Make allowance—I?” and Lyster looked at him curiously. “Are you trying to justify her to me? Why, man, you ought to know by this time what keeps me here a regular lounger around camp, and there is no need to make excuses for her to me. I thought you knew.”
“You mean you—like her?”
“Worse than that,” said Max, with his cheery, confident smile. “I’m trying to get her to say she likes me.”
“And she?”
“Well, she won’t meet me as near half-way as I would like,” he confessed; “talks a lot of stuff about not being brought up right, and not suited to our style of life at home, and all that. But she did seem rather partial to me when she was ill and off guard. Don’t you think so? That is all I have to go on; but it encourages me to remember it.”
Overton did not speak, and Lyster continued speculating on his chances, when he noticed his companion’s silence.
“Why don’t you speak, Dan? I did hope you would help me rather than be indifferent.”
“Help you!” and Lyster was taken aback at the fierce straightening of the brows and the strange tone in which the words were uttered. The older man could not but see his surprised look, for he recovered himself, and dropped his hand in the old familiar way on Lyster’s shoulder.
“Not much chance of my helping you when she employs you as an agent when she wants any service, rather than exchange words with me herself. Now, that is the way it looks, Max.”
“I know,” agreed Lyster. “And to tell the truth, Dan, the only thing she does that really vexes me is her queer attitude toward you of late. I can’t think she means to be ungrateful, but—”
“Don’t
bother about that. Everything has changed for her lately, and she has her own troubles to think of. Don’t you doubt her on my account. Just remember that. And if—she says ’yes’ to you, Max, be sure I would rather see her go to you than any other man I know.”
“That is all right,” observed Lyster, laughingly; “but if you only had a love affair or two of your own, you could perhaps get up more enthusiasm over mine.”
Then he sauntered off to report the financial interview to ’Tana, and laughed as he went at the impatient look flung at him by Overton.
He found ’Tana visiting at the tent of the cousins, who were using all arguments to persuade her to share their new abode. Each was horrified to learn that she had dismissed the squaw at sleeping time, and had remained in the cabin alone.
“Not quite alone,” she corrected, “for Harris was just on the other side of the door.”
“Much protection he would be.”
“Well, then, Dan Overton was with him. How is he for protection?”
“Thoroughly competent, no doubt,” agreed Miss Lavina, with a rather scandalized look. “But, my dear, the propriety?”
“Do you think Flap-Jacks would help any one out in propriety?” retorted ’Tana. “But we won’t stumble over that question long, for I want to leave the camp and go back to the Ferry.”
“And then, ’Tana?”
“And then—I don’t know, Mrs. Huzzard, to school, maybe—though I feel old for that, older than either of you, I am sure—so old that I care nothing for all the things I wanted less than a year ago. They are within my reach now, yet I only want to rest—”
She did not finish the sentence.
Mrs. Huzzard, noticing the tired look in her eyes and the wistfulness of her voice, reached out and patted her head affectionately.
“You want, first of all, to grow strong and hearty, like you used to be—that is what you need first, then the rest will all come right in good time. You’ll want to see the theaters, and the pictures, and hear the fine music you used to talk of. And you’ll travel, and see all the fine places you used to dream about. Then, maybe, you’ll get ambitious, like you used to be, about making pictures out of clay. For you can have fine teaching now, you know, and you’ll find, after a while, that the days will hardly seem long enough for all the things you want to do. That is how it will be when you get strong again.”
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