"Oh, yes, dear—quite," returned that young lady confidently; "and you need not assume that anxious air regarding either the proprieties or my youthful affections, for, to tell the truth, I am impelled to go through sheer perversity; not because your latest favorite wants me, but simply because he does not."
Twenty minutes after her offer they were mounted and clattering away over the crisp bronze turf. To Stuart the task of entertaining a lady whose remarks to him seldom verged from the ironical was anything but a sinecure—more, it was easy to see that he was unused to it; and an ungallant query to himself was: "Why did she come, anyway?" He had not heard her reply to Tillie.
The air was crisp and cold enough to make their heavy wraps a comfort, especially when they reached the higher land; the sun was showing fitfully, low-flying, skurrying clouds often throwing it in eclipse.
"Snow is coming," prophesied the girl, with a weather-eye to the north, where the sky was banking up in pale-gray masses; "perhaps not heavy enough to impede your trip south, to Owens, but that bit over there looks like a visiting-card of winter."
"How weather-wise you are!" he observed. "Now I had noticed not the slightest significance in all that; in fact, you seem possessed of several Indian accomplishments—their wood-lore, their language, their habit of going to nature instead of an almanac; and did not Mrs. Hardy say you knew some Indian songs? Who taught you them?"
"Songs came near getting us into a civil war at breakfast," she observed, "and I am not sure that the ground is any more safe around Indian than Scotch ones."
"There is something more substantial of the former race" he said, pointing ahead.
It was the hulking figure of a Siwash, who had seen them first and tried to dodge out of sight, and failing, halted at the edge of a little stream.
"Hostile?" queried Stuart, relying more on his companion's knowledge than his own; but she shook her head.
"No; from the Reservation, I suppose. He doesn't look like a blanket brave. We will see."
Coming within speaking distance, she hailed him across the divide of the little stream, and got in reply what seemed to Stuart an inextricable mass of staccatos and gutturals.
"He is a Kootenai," she explained, "and wants to impress on our minds that is a good Indian."
"He does not look good for much," was the natural remark of the white man, eyeing Mr. Kootenai critically; "even on his native heath he is not picturesque."
"No—poor imp!" agreed the girl, "with winter so close, their concern is more how they are to live than how they appear to people who have no care for them."
She learned he was on his way south to the Flathead Reservation; so he had evidently solved the question of how he intended living for the winter, at all events. He was, however, short of ammunition. When Rachel explained his want, Stuart at once agreed to give him some.
"Don't be in a hurry!" advised his commander-in-chief; "wait until we know how it is that he has no ammunition, and so short a distance from his tribe. An Indian can always get that much if he is not too lazy to hunt or trap, or is not too much of a thief."
But she found the noble red man too proud to answer many questions of a squaw. The fear however, of hostilities from the ever-combative Blackfeet seemed to be the chief moving cause.
"Rather a weak-backed reason," commented Rachel; "and I guess you can dig roots from here to the Reservation. No powder, no shot."
"Squaw—papoose—sick," he added, as a last appeal to sympathy.
"Where?"
He waved a dirty hand up the creek.
"Go on ahead; show us where they are."
His hesitation was too slight to be a protest, but still there was a hesitation, and the two glanced at each other as they noticed it.
"I don't believe there is either squaw or papoose," decided Stuart. "Lo is a romancer."
But there was, huddled over a bit of fire, and holding in her arms a little bundle of bronze flesh and blood. It was, as the Indian had said, sick—paroxysms of shivers assailing it from time to time.
"Give me your whisky-flask!" Rachel said promptly; and dismounting, she poured some in the tin cup at her saddle and set it on the fire—the blue, sputtering flame sending the odor of civilization into the crisp air. Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw, who had sat stolidly, taking no notice of the new-comers; but as the girl's hand was reached to help the child she raised her head, and then Rachel knew who she was.
* * *
Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw
* * *
They did not speak, but after a little of the warm liquor had forced itself down the slight throat, Rachel left the cup in the mother's hands, and reached again for the whisky.
"You can get more from Davy MacDougall," she said, in a half-conciliatory tone at this wholesale confiscation; "and—and you might give him some ammunition—not much."
"What a vanishing of resolves!" he remarked, measuring out an allowance of shot; "and all because of a copper-colored papoose. So you have a bit of natural, womanly weakness?"
The girl did not answer; there was a certain air of elation about her as she undid a scarf from her throat and wrapped it about the little morsel of humanity.
"Go past the sheep ranch," she directed the passive warrior, who stood gazing at the wealth in whisky and powder. "Do you know where it is—Hardy's? Tell them I sent you—show them that," and she pointed to the scarf; "tell them what you need for squaw and papoose; they will find it."
Skulking Brave signified that he understood, and then led Betty toward her.
"He is not very hospitable," she confided to Stuart, in the white man's tongue, "else he would not be in such haste to get rid of us."
And although their host did not impress one as having a highly strung nervous organization, yet his manner during their halt gave them the idea that he was ill at ease. They did not tarry long, but having given what help they could, rode away, lighter of whisky and ammunition, and the girl, strange enough, seemed lighter of heart.
After they had reached a point high above the little creek, they turned for a look over the country passed. It lay in brown and blue-gray patches, with dashes of dark-green on the highlands, where the pines grew.
"What is the white thing moving along that line of timber?" asked the girl, pointing in the direction they had come. It was too far off to see clearly, but with the aid of Stuart's field-glass, it was decided to be the interesting family they had stopped with a little ways back. And the white thing noticed was a horse they were riding. It was getting over the ground at the fastest rate possible with its triple weight, for the squaw was honored with a seat back of her lord.
"I imagined they were traveling on foot, didn't you?" asked Stuart.
"What a fool he was to steal a white horse!" remarked the girl contemptuously; "he might know it would be spotted for miles."
* * *
CHAPTER IV.
A TRIO IN WITCHLAND.
The noon was passed when they reached the cabin on Scot's Mountain, and found its owner on the point of leaving for the Maple range. But quickly replacing his gun on its pegs, he uncovered the fire, set on the coffee-pot, and, with Rachel's help, in a very short time had a steaming-hot dinner of broiled bear steaks and "corn-dodgers," with the additional delicacy of a bowl of honey from the wild bees' store.
"I have some laid by as a bit of a gift to Mr. Hardy's lady," he confided to Rachel. "I found this fellow," tapping the steak, "in one o' the traps as I was a-comin' my way home; an' the fresh honey on his paws helped me smell out where he had spied it, and a good lot o' it there was that Mr. Grizzly had na reached."
"See here," said Stuart, noting that, because of their visit, the old man had relinquished all idea of going to the woods, "we must not interfere with your plans, for at best we have but a short time to stay." And then he explained the reason.
When the question of snow was taken into account, Davy agreed that Stuart's decision was perh
aps wise; but "he was main sorry o' the necessity."
"An' it's to Owens ye be taken' the trail?" he asked. "Eh, but that's curious now. I have a rare an' good friend thereabouts that I would be right glad to send a word to; an' I was just about to take a look at his tunnel an' the cabin, when ye come the day, just to see it was all as it should be ere the snows set in."
"I should be delighted to be of any service to you," said Stuart warmly; "and to carry a message is a very slight one. Who is your friend?"
"It's just the man Genesee, who used to be my neighbor. But he's left me alone now these many months—about a year;" and he turned to Rachel for corroboration.
"More than a year," she answered briefly.
"Well, it is now. I'm losin' track o' dates these late days; but you're right, lass, an' the winter would ha' been ower lonely if it had na been for yourself. Think o' that, Charlie Stuart: this slim bit o' womankind substituting herself for a rugged build o' a man taller than you by a half-head, an' wi' no little success, either. But," he added teasingly, "ye owed me the debt o' your company for the sending o' him away; so ye were only honest after all, Rachel Hardy."
Rachel laughed, thinking it easier, perhaps, to dispose of the question thus than by any disclaimer—especially with the eyes of Stuart on her as they were.
"You are growing to be a tease," she answered. "You will be saying I sent Kalitan and Talapa, next."
"But Talapa has na gone from the hills?"
"Hasn't she? Well, I saw her on the trail, going direct south, this morning, as fast as she could get over the ground, with a warrior and a papoose as companions."
"Did ye now? Well, good riddance to them. They ha' been loafing around the Kootenai village ever since I sent them from the cabin in the summer. That Talapa was a sleepy-eyed bit o' old Nick. I told Genesee that same from the first, when he was wasting his stock o' pity on her. Ye see," he said, turning his speech to Stuart, "a full-blooded Siwash has some redeeming points, and a character o' their own; but the half-breeds are a part white an' a part red, with a good wheen o' the devil's temper thrown in."
"She didn't appear to have much of the last this morning," observed Rachel. "She looked pretty miserable."
"Ah, well, tak' the best o' them, an' they look that to the whites. An' so they're flittin' to the Reservation to live off the Government? Skulking Bob'll be too lazy to be even takin' the chance o' fightin' with his people against the Blackfeet, if trouble should come; and there's been many a straggler from the rebels makin' their way north to the Blackfeet, an' that is like to breed mischief."
"And your friend is at Owens?"
"Yes—or thereabouts. One o' the foremost o' their scouts, they tell me, an' a rare good one he is, with no prejudice on either side o' the question."
"I should think, being a white man, his sympathies would lean toward his own race," observed Stuart.
"Well, that's as may chance. There's many the man who finds his best friends in strange blood. Genesee is thought no little of among the Kootenais—more, most like, than he would be where he was born and bred. Folk o' the towns know but little how to weigh a man."
"And is he from the cities?"
For the first time Davy MacDougall looked up quickly.
"I know not," he answered briefly, "an', not giving to you a short answer, I care not. Few questions make long friends in the hills."
Stuart was somewhat nonplussed at the bluntness of the hint, and Rachel was delighted.
"You see," she reminded him wickedly, "one can be an M. D., an L. S. D., or any of the annexations, without Kootenai people considering his education finished. But look here, Davy MacDougall, we only ran up to say 'klahowya,' and have got to get back to-night; so, if you are going over to Tamahnous cabin, don't stop on our account; we can go part of the way with you."
"But ye can go all the way, instead o' but a part, an' then no be out o' your road either," he said, with eagerness that showed how loath he was to part from his young companions. "Ye know," he added, turning to Rachel, "it is but three miles by the cross-cut to Genesee's, while by the valley ye would cover eight on the way. Now, the path o'er the hills is no fit for the feet o' a horse, except it be at the best o' seasons; but this is an ower good one, with neither the rain nor the ice; an' if ye will risk it—"
Of course they would risk it; and with a draught apiece from an odorous, dark-brown jug, and the gift of a flask that found its way to Stuart's pocket, they started.
They needed that swallow of brandy as a brace against the cold wind of the hills. It hustled through the pines like winged fiends let loose from the north. Dried berries from the bushes and cones from the trees were sent pattering to sleep for the winter, and the sighs through the green roofing, and the moans from twisted limbs, told of the hardihood needed for life up there. The idea impressed Stuart so much that he gave voice to it, and was laughed at grimly by the old mountaineer.
"Oh, well, it just takes man to be man, an' that's all when all's said," he answered "To be sure, there be times when one canna stir for the snow wreaths, but that's to be allowed for; an' then ye may ha' took note that my cabin is in shelter o' all but the south wind, an' that's a great matter. Men who live in the mountain maun get used to its frolics; but it's an ugly bit," he acknowledged, as they stopped to rest and look up over the seemingly pathless way they had come; "but I've been thankful for it many's the time, when, unlooked for, Genesee and Mowitza would show their faces at my door, an' she got so she could make that climb in the dark—think o' that! Ah, but she was the wise one!"
Stuart glanced at Rachel, who was more likely than himself to understand what was meant by the "wise one;" but he did not again venture a question. Mowitza was another squaw, he supposed, and one of the companions of the man Genesee. And the other one they had passed in the morning?—her name also was connected with the scout whom the white girl seemed to champion or condemn as the fancy pleased her. And Stuart, as a stranger to the social system of the wilderness, had his curiosity widely awakened. A good deal of it was directed to Rachel herself. Hearing MacDougall speak of the man to her, he could understand that she had no lack of knowledge in that direction—and the direction was one of which the right sort of a girl was supposed to be ignorant; or, if not ignorant, at least to conceal her wisdom in the wise way of her sisters.
This one did nothing of the sort; and the series of new impressions received made him observe the girl with a scrutiny not so admiring as he had always, until now, given her. He was irritated with himself that it was so, yet his ideas of what a woman should be were getting some hard knocks at her hands.
Suddenly the glisten of the little lake came to them through the gray trunks of the trees, and a little later they had descended the series of small circular ridges that terraced the cove from the timber to the waters, that was really not much more than an immense spring that happened to bubble up where there was a little depression to spread itself in and show to advantage.
"But a mill would be turned easily by that same bit o' water," observed MacDougall; "an' there's where Genesee showed the level head in locating his claim where he did."
"It looks like wasted power, placed up here," observed Stuart, "for it seems about the last place in Christendom for a mill."
"Well, so it may look to many a pair o' eyes," returned the old man, with a wink and a shrug that was indescribable, but suggested a vast deal of unuttered knowledge; "but the lad who set store by it because o' the water-power was a long ways from a fool, I can tell ye."
Again Stuart found himself trying to count the spokes of some shadowy wheels within wheels that had a trick of eluding him; and he felt irritatingly confident that the girl looking at him with quizzical, non-committal eyes could have enlightened him much as to the absent ruler of this domain, who, according to her own words, was utterly degraded, yet had a trick of keeping his personality such a living thing after a year's absence.
The cabin was cold with the chill dreariness of any house that is
left long without the warmth of an embodied human soul. Only the wandering, homeless spirits of the air had passed in and out, in and out of its chinks, sighing through them for months, until, on entrance, one felt an intuitive, sympathetic shiver for their loneliness.
A fire was soon crackling on the hearth; but the red gleams did not dance so merrily on the rafters as they had the first time she had been warmed at the fire-place—the daylight was too merciless a rival. It penetrated the corners and showed up the rude bunk and some mining implements; from a rafter hung a roll of skins done up in bands of some pliable withes.
Evidently Genesee's injunction had been obeyed, for even the pottery, and reed baskets, and bowls still shone from the box of shelves.
"It's a mystery to me those things are not stolen by the Indians," observed Stuart, noticing the lack of any fastening on the door, except a bar on the inside.
"There's no much danger o' that," said the old man grimly, "unless it be by a Siwash who knows naught o' the country. The Kootenai people would do no ill to Genesee, nor would any Injun when he lives in the Tamahnous ground."
"What territory is that?"
"Just the territory o' witchcraft—no less. The old mine and the spring, with the circle o' steps down to it, they let well alone, I can tell ye; and as for stealin', they'd no take the worth o' a tenpenny nail from between the two hills that face each other, an' the rocks o' them 'gives queer echoes that they canna explain. Oh, yes, they have their witches, an' their warlocks, an' enchanted places, an' will no go against their belief, either."
"But," said Rachel, with a slight hesitation, "Talapa was not afraid to live here."
"An' did ye not know, then, that she was not o' Kootenai stock?" asked the old man. "Well, she was not a bit o' it; Genesee bought her of a beast of a Blackfoot."
"Bought her?" asked Stuart, and even Rachel opened her eyes in attention—perhaps, after all, not knowing so much as the younger man had angrily given her credit for.
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