He had for her something approaching veneration. In her tender, half-shy love of her husband she seemed to him as the Madonna to those of the Roman church—a symbol of something holy—of a purity of affection unknown to the rough man of the hills. Unpretentious little Tillie would have been amazed if she had suspected the pedestal she occupied in the imagination of this dark-faced fellow, whose only affection seemed to be lavished on Mowitza. Clara always looked at him somewhat askance; and in passing a party of the Indians who were berry-hunting in the mountains, she noted suspiciously his ready speech in their own language, and the decided deference paid him by them; the stolid stare of the squaws filled her with forebodings of covetousness for her raiment—of which several of them rather stood in need, though the weather was warm—and that night was passed by her in waking dreams of an Indian massacre, with their guide as a leader of the enemy.
"Do you know them very well?" asked Miss Hardy, riding up to Genesee. "Is it entirely Chinook they are talking? Let me try my knowledge of it. I should like to speak to them in their jargon. Can I?"
"You can try. Here's a Siwash, a friend of mine, who is as near a Boston (American) man as any of them—try him."
And, under Genesee's tuition, she asked several questions about the berry yield in the hills, and the distance to markets where pelts could be sold; and the Indian answered briefly, expressing distance as much by the sweep of his hand toward the west as by the adjective "siah-si-ah;" and Miss Hardy, well satisfied with her knowledge, would have liked to add to her possessions the necklace of bear's claws that adorned the bronze throat of the gentleman who answered her questions.
The squaws slouched around the camp, curious and dirty, here and there a half-breed showing the paler blood through olive skin. The younger women or girls were a shade less repulsive than their mothers, but none showed material for a romance of Indian life. They were as spiritless as ill-kept cattle.
Back of some tethered ponies Miss Hardy noticed a dark form dodging as if to avoid being seen. A squaw possessed of shyness was such a direct contradiction of those she had seen, that the white girl found herself watching the Indian one with a sort of curiosity—in fact, she rode her horse over in the direction of the ponies, thinking the form she had a glimpse of was only a child; but it was not, for back of the ponies it lay flat to the ground as a snake, only the head raised, the eyes meeting those of Miss Hardy with a half scowl, and the bright-beaded dress outlining the form of a girl perhaps twenty years old, and dressed much neater than any she had seen in the camp. By the light tinge of color she was evidently a half-breed, and the white girl was about to turn her horse's head, when, with a low exclamation, the other seized a blanket that had slipped from a pony, and quick as a flash had rolled her plump form in it, head and heels, and dropped like one asleep, face downward, in the trampled grass.
Wondering at the sudden hiding and its cause, Miss Hardy turned away and met Genesee, who was riding toward her.
"Shaky-looking stock," he commented, supposing she was looking at the ponies. "The rest are going on, Miss; we have to do some traveling to reach our last camp by night-fall."
As they rode away, Miss Hardy turned for a last look at that mummy-looking form by the ponies. It apparently had not moved. She wondered if it was Genesee the girl was hiding from, and if so, why? Was their guide one of those heroes of the border whose face is a thing of terror to Indian foe? And was the half-breed girl one of the few timid ones? She could not answer her own questions, and something kept her from speaking to Genesee of it; in fact, she did not speak to him of anything with the same freedom since that conversation by the laurel bushes.
Sometimes she would laugh a little to herself as she thought of how he had brushed off that coat-sleeve; it had angered her, amused her, and puzzled her. That entire scene seemed a perplexing, unreal sort of an affair to her sometimes, especially when looking at their guide as he went about the commonplace duties in the camp or on the trail. An undemonstrative, prosaic individual she knew he appeared to the rest; laconic and decided when he did speak, but not a cheery companion. To her always, after that day, he was a suggestion of a crater in which the fires were banked.
* * *
CHAPTER V.
AT LAST CAMP.
After their stop at the Indian camp, which Genesee explained was a berrying crowd from the Kootenai tribe, there was, of course, comment among the visitors as to the mixed specimens of humanity they had seen there.
"I don't wonder a white man is ashamed of an Indian wife," said Mrs. Houghton. "What slouchy creatures!"
"All the more reason for a white man to act the part of missionary, and marry them," remarked Rachel Hardy, "and teach them what the domestic life of a woman should be."
Genesee turned square around to look at the speaker—perhaps she did not strike him as being a domestic woman herself. Whatever the cause of that quick attention, she noticed it, and added: "Well, Mr. Genesee, don't you think so? You must have seen considerable of that sort of life."
"I have—some," he answered concisely, but showing no disposition to discuss it, while Mrs. Houghton was making vain efforts to engage Miss Hardy's attention by the splendid spread of the country below them; but it was ineffectual.
"Yes, Clara, I see the levels along that river—I've been seeing them for the past two hours—but just now I am studying the social system of those hills"; and then she turned again to their guide. "You did not answer my question, Mr. Genesee," she said, ignoring Mrs. Houghton's admonishing glances. "Do you not agree with my idea of marriages between whites and Indians?"
"No!" he said bluntly; "most of the white men I know among the Indians need themselves to be taught how people should live; they need white women to teach them. It's uphill work showing an Indian how to live decently when a man has forgotten how himself. Missionary work! Squaw men are about as fit for that as—as hell's fit for a powder-house."
And under this emphatic statement and the shocked expression of Clara's face, Miss Hardy collapsed, with the conviction that there must be lights and shades of life in the Indian country that were not apparent to the casual visitor. She wondered sometimes that Genesee had lived there so long with no family ties, and she seldom heard him speak of any white friend in Montana—only of old Davy MacDougall sometimes. Most of his friends had Indian names. Altogether, it seemed a purposeless sort of existence.
"Do you expect to live your life out here, like this?" she asked him once. "Don't you ever expect to go back home?"
"Hardly! There is nothing to take me back now."
"And only a horse and a gun to keep you here?" she smiled.
"N—no; something besides, Miss. I've got a right smart of a ranch on the other side of the Maple range. It's running wild—no stock on it; but in Tamahnous Hill there's a hole I've been digging at for the past four years. MacDougall reckons I'm 'witched' by it, but it may pan out all right some of these days."
"Gold hunting?"
"No, Miss, silver; and it's there. I've got tired more than once and given it the klatawa (the go-by); but I'd always come back, and I reckon I always will until I strike it."
"And then?"
"Well, I haven't got that far yet."
And thus any curiosity about the man's life or future was generally silenced. He had told her many things of the past; his life in the mines of Colorado and Idaho, with now and then the diversion of a government scout's work along the border. All of that he would speak of without reserve, but of the actual present or of the future he would say nothing.
"I have read somewhere in a book of a man without a past," remarked the girl to Mrs. Hardy; "but our guide seems a man utterly without a future."
"Perhaps he does not like to think of it here alone," suggested Tillie thoughtfully; "he must be very lonely sometimes. Just see how he loves that horse!"
"Not a horse, Tillie—a klootchman kiuatan," corrected the student of Chinook; "If you are going to live out here, you must learn the language of the
hills."
"You are likely to know it first;" and then, after a little, she added: "But noticing that man's love for his Mowitza, I have often thought how kind he would be to a wife. I think he has a naturally affectionate nature, though he does swear—I heard him; and to grow old and wild here among the Indians and squaw men seems too bad. He is intelligent—a man who might accomplish a great deal yet. You know he is comparatively young—thirty-five, I heard Hen say."
"Yes," said Mrs. Houghton sarcastically; "a good age at which to adopt a child. You had better take him back as one of the fixtures on the ranch, Tillie; of course he may need some training in the little courtesies of life, but no doubt Rachel would postpone her return East and offer her services as tutor;" and with this statement Mistress Houghton showed her disgust of the entire subject.
"She is 'riled,'" said the girl, looking quizzically after the plump retreating form.
"Why, what in the world—"
"Nothing in the world, Tillie, and that's what's the matter with Clara. Her ideas of the world are, and always will be, bounded by the rules and regulations of Willow Centre, Kentucky. Of course it isn't to be found on a map of the United States, but it's a big place to Clara; and she doesn't approve of Mr. Genesee because he lives outside its knowledge. She intimated yesterday that he might be a horse-thief for any actual acquaintance we had with his resources or manner of living."
"Ridiculous!" laughed Tillie. "That man!"
The girl slipped her arm around the little wife's waist and gave her a hug like a young bear. She had been in a way lectured and snubbed by that man, but she bore no malice.
The end of their cultus corrie was reached as they went into camp for a two-days' stay, on the shoulder of a mountain from which one could look over into the Idaho hills, north into British Columbia, and through the fair Kootenai valleys to the east, where the home-ranch lay.
Houghton and Hardy each had killed enough big game to become inoculated with the taste for wild life, and the ladies were delighted with the idea of having the spoils of the hunt for the adornment of their homes; and altogether the trip was voted a big success.
Is there anything more appetizing, after a long ride through the mountains, than to rest under the cedars at sunset and hear the sizzle of broiled meat on the red coals, and have the aroma of coffee borne to you on the breeze that would lull you to sleep if you were not so hungry?
"I could have eaten five meals during every twenty-four hours since we started," acknowledged Rachel, as she watched with flattering attention the crisping slices of venison that were accumulating on a platter by the fire.
And she looked as if both the appetite and the wild living had agreed with her. Clara complained that Rachel really seemed to pride herself on the amount of tan she had been able to gather from the wind and the sun, while Hardy decided that only her light hair would keep her from being taken for an Indian.
But for all the looks that were gaining a tinge of wildness, and the appetites that would persist in growing ravenous, it was none the less a jolly, pleasant circle that gathered about the evening meal, sometimes eaten on a large flat stone, if any were handy, and again on the grass, where the knives and small articles of table-ware would lose themselves in the tall spears; but, whatever was used as a table, the meal in the evening was the domestic event of the day. At midday there was often but a hasty lunch; breakfast was simply a preparation for travel; but in the evening all were prepared for rest and the enjoyment of either eatables or society. And until the darkness fell there was the review of the day's hunt by the men—Hardy and Houghton vying with each other in their recitals—or, as Ivans expressed it, "swappin' lies"—around the fire. Sometimes there would be singing, and blended with the notes of night-birds in the forest would sound the call of human throats echoing upward in old hymns that all had known sometime, in the East. And again Tillie would sing them a ballad or a love-song in a sweet, fresh voice; or, with Clara, Hardy, and Houghton, a quartette would add volume to some favorite, their scout a silent listener. Rachel never sang with the rest; she preferred whistling, herself. And many a time when out of sight of her on the trail, she was located by that boyish habit she had of echoing the songs of many of the birds that were new to her, learning their notes, and imitating them so well as to bring many a decoyed answer from the woods.
Between herself and the guide there was no more their former comaraderie. They had never regained their old easy, friendly manner. Still, she asked him that night at "last camp" of the music of the Indians. Had they any? Could he sing? Had there ever been any of their music published? etc.
And he told them of the airs that were more like chants, like the echoes of whispering or moaning forests, set to human words; of the dusky throats that, without training, yet sang together with never a discord; of the love-songs that had in them the minor cadences of sadness. Only their war-songs seemed to carry brightness, and they only when echoes of victory.
In the low, glowing light of the fire, when the group around it faded in the darkness, he seemed to forget his many listeners, and talked on as if to only one. To the rest it was as if they had met a stranger there that evening for the first time, and found him entertaining. Even Mrs. Houghton dropped her slightly supercilious manner toward him, a change to which he was as indifferent as to her coolness. It may have been Tillie's home-songs in the evening that unlocked his lips; or it may have been the realization that the pleasure-trip was ended—that in a short time he would know these people no more, who had brought him home-memories in their talk of home-lives. It may have been a dash of recklessness that urged him to enjoy it for a little only—this association that suggested so much to which he had long been a stranger. Whatever the impulse was, it showed a side of his nature that only Rachel had gained any knowledge of through those first bright, eager days of their cultus corrie.
At Tillie's request he repeated some remembered fragments of Indian songs that had been translated into the Red's language, and of which he gave them the English version or meaning as well as he could. A couple of them he knew entire, and to Tillie's delight he hummed the plaintive airs until she caught the notes. And even after the rest had quietly withdrawn and rolled themselves in blankets for the night's rest, Hardy and his wife and Genesee still sat there with old legends of Tsiatko, the demon of the night, for company, and with strange songs in which the music would yet sound familiar to any ears used to the shrilling of the winds through the timber, or the muffled moans of the wood-dove.
And in the sweet dusk of the night, Rachel, the first to leave the fire, lay among the odorous, spicy branches of the cedar and watched the picture of the group about the fire. All was in darkness, save when a bit of reflected red would outline form or feature, and they looked rather uncanny in the red-and-black coloring. An Indian council or the grouping of witches and warlocks it might have been, had one judged the scene only from sight. But the voices of the final three, dropped low though they were for the sake of the supposed sleepers, yet had a tone of pleasant converse that belied their impish appearance.
Those voices came to Rachel dreamily, merging their music with the drowsy odors of a spruce pillow. And through them all she heard Tillie and Genesee singing a song of some unlettered Indian poet:
"Lemolo mika tsolo siah polaklie,
Towagh tsee chil-chil siah saghallie.
Mika na chakko?—me sika chil-chil,
Opitsah! mika winapia,
Tsolo—tsolo!"
"Wild do I wander, far in the darkness,
Shines bright a sweet star far up above.
Will you not come to me? you are the star,
Sweetheart! I wait,
Lost!—in the dark!"
And the white girl's mouth curled dubiously in that smile that always vanquished the tender curves of her lips, and then dropped asleep whispering the refrain, "Tsolo—tsolo!"
* * *
CHAPTER VI.
TSOLO—TSOLO!
The retracing of steps,
either figuratively or literally, is always provocative of thought to the individual who walks again over the old paths; the waning of a moon never finds the same state of feelings in the heart that had throbbed through it under the gold sickle. Back over how many a road do we walk with a sigh, remembering the laughter that had once echoed along it! Something has been gained, something has been lost, since; and a human sigh is as likely to be called forth by one cause as the other.
Miss Rachel Hardy, who usually laughed at sighs of sentiment, did not indulge in them as one by one the landmarks of the past three weeks rose in sight. But different natures find different vents for feeling, and she may have got rid of hers by the long gallops she took alone over the now known trail, priding herself on her ability to find her way miles ahead of the slower-moving party; and resting herself and horse in some remembered retreat, would await their coming.
Through these solitary rides she began to understand the fascination such a free, untrammeled existence would have for a man. One must feel a very Adam in the midst of this virginity of soil and life of the hills. She had not Tillie's domestic ideas of life, else the thought of an Eve might also have occurred to her. But though she wasted no breath in sighs over the retraced cultus corrie, neither did she in the mockery that had tantalized Clara in the beginning. That lady did not find her self-imposed duty of chaperon nearly so arduous as at first, since, from the time the other ladies awakened to the fact that their guide had a good baritone voice and could be interesting, the girl forgot her role of champion, also her study of mongrel languages; for she dropped that ready use of Chinook of which she had been proud, especially in her conversation with him, and only used it if chance threw her in the way of Indians hunting or gathering olallie (berries) in the hills.
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