Told in the Hills

by Marah Ellis Ryan

  "Are you fixed all right here in case of being snowed in?" he asked.

  "I am that—for four weeks, if need be; but does it look like that out?"

  "Pretty much. Good-bye, Davy;" and he walked back and held out his hand to the old man, who looked at him wonderingly. Though their friendship was earnest, they were never demonstrative, and Genesee usually left with a careless klahowya!

  "Why, lad—"

  "I'm going to look for her, Davy. If I find her, you'll hear of it; if I don't, tell the cursed fools at the ranch that I—that I sent a guide who would give his life for her. Good-bye, old fellow—good-bye."

  Down over the mountain he went, leading Mowitza, and breaking the path ahead of her—slow, slow work. At that rate of travel, it would be morning before he could reach the ranch; and he must find her first.

  He found he could have made more speed with snow-shoes and without Mowitza—the snow was banking up so terribly. The valley was almost reached when a queer sound came to him through the thick veil of white that had turned gray with coming night.

  Mowitza heard it, too, for she threw up her head and answered it with a long whinny, even before her master had decided what the noise was; but it came again, and then he had no doubt it was the call of a horse, and it was somewhere on the hill above him.

  He fastened Mowitza to a tree, and started up over the way he had come, stopping now and then to call, but hearing no answer—not even from the horse, that suggested some phantom-like steed that had passed in the white storm.

  Suddenly, close to him, he heard a sound much more human—a whistle; and in a moment he plunged in that direction, and almost stumbled over a form huddled against a fallen tree. He could not see her face. He did not need to. She was in his arms, and she was alive. That was enough. But she lay strangely still for a live woman, and he felt in his pocket for that whisky-flask; a little of the fiery liquor strangled her, but aroused her entirely.

  "Jack?"

  "Yes."

  "I knew if I called long enough you would come; but I can only whisper now. You came just in time."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "Oh, hours, I think. I started for the gulch trail, and couldn't make it with snow on the ground. Then I tried for the other trail, but got lost in the snow—couldn't even find the cabin. Help me up, will you? I guess I'm all right now."

  She was not, quite, for she staggered woefully; and he caught her quickly to him and held her with one arm, while he fumbled for some matches with the other.

  "You're a healthy-looking specimen," was the rather depreciating verdict he gave at sight of the white, tired face. She smiled from the pillow of his shoulder, but did not open her eyes; then the match flickered and went out, and he could see her no more.

  "Why didn't you stay at home, as I told you to?"

  "Didn't want to."

  "Don't you know I'm likely to catch my death of cold tramping here after you?"

  "No," with an intonation that sounded rather heartless; "you never catch cold."

  The fact that she had not lost her old spirit, if she had her voice, was a great point in her favor, and he had a full appreciation of it. She was tired out, and hoarse, but still had pluck enough to attempt the trip to the ranch.

  "We've got to make it," she decided, when the subject was broached; "we can make it to-night as well as to-morrow, if you know the trail. Did you say you had some biscuits? Well, I'm hungry."

  "You generally are," he remarked, with a dryness in no way related to the delight with which he got the biscuits for her and insisted on her swallowing some more of the whisky. "Are you cold?"

  "No—not a bit; and that seems funny, too. If it hadn't been such a soft, warm snow, I should have been frozen."

  He left her and went to find the mare, which he did without much trouble; and in leading her back over the little plateau he was struck with a sense of being on familiar ground. It was such a tiny little shelf jutting out from the mountain.

  Swathed in snow as it was, and with the darkness above it, he felt so confident that he walked straight out to where the edge should be if he was right. Yes, there was the sudden shelving that left the little plot inaccessible from one side.

  "Do you know where we are, my girl?" he asked as he rejoined her.

  "Somewhere on Scot's Mountain," she hazarded; the possessive term used by him had a way of depriving her of decided opinions.

  "You're just about the same place where you watched the sun come up once—may be you remember?"

  "Yes."

  He had helped her up. They stood there silent what seemed a long time; then he spoke:

  "I've come here often since that time. It's been a sort of a church—one that no one likely ever set foot in but you and me." He paused as if in hesitation; then continued: "I've wished often I could see you here again in the same place, just because I got so fond of it; and I don't know what you think of it, but this little bit of the mountain has something witched in it for me. I felt in the dark when my feet touched it, and I have a fancy, after it's all over, to be brought up here and laid where we stood that morning."

  "Jack," and her other hand was reached impulsively to his, "what's the matter—what makes you speak like that now?"

  "I don't know. The idea came strong to me back there, and I felt as if you—you—were the only one I could tell it to, for you know nearly all now—all the bad in me, too; yet you've never been the girl to draw away or keep back your hand if you felt I needed it. Ah, my girl, you are one in a thousand!"

  He was speaking in the calmest, most dispassionate way, as if it was quite a usual thing to indulge in dissertations of this sort, with the snow slowly covering them. Perhaps he was right in thinking the place witched.

  "You've been a good friend to me," he continued, "whether I was near or far—MacDougall told me things that proved it; and if my time should come quick, as many a man's has in the Indian country, I believe you would see I was brought here, where I want to be."

  "You may be sure of it," she said earnestly; "but I don't like to hear you talk like that—it isn't like you. You give me a queer, uncanny feeling. I can't see you, and I am not sure it is Jack—nika tillikum—I am talking to at all. If you keep it up, you will have me nervous."

  He held her hand and drew it up to his throat, pressing his chin against the fingers with a movement that was as caressive as a kiss.

  "Don't you be afraid," he said gently; "you are afraid of nothing else, and you must never be of me. Come, come, my girl, if we're to go, we'd better be getting a move on."

  The prosaic suggestion seemed an interruption of his own tendencies, which were not prosaic. The girl slipped her fingers gently but decidedly from their resting-place so near his lips, and laid her one hand on his arm.

  "Yes, we must be going, or"—and he knew she was smiling, though the darkness hid her—"or it will look as if there are two witched folks in our chapel—our white chapel—to-night. I'm glad we happened here, since the thought is any comfort to you; but I hope it will be many a day before you are brought here, instead of bringing yourself."

  He took her hand, and through the white masses turned their faces down the mountain. The mare followed meekly after. The stimulant of bread and whisky—and more, the coming of this man, of whom she was so stubbornly confident—had acted as a tonic to Rachel, and she struggled through bravely, accepting little of help, and had not once asked how he came to be there instead of the ranchmen.

  Perhaps it was because of their past association, and that one night together when he had carried her in his arms; but whatever he was to the other people, he had always seemed to her a sort of guardian of the hills and all lost things.

  She did not think of his presence there nearly so much as she did of those ideas of his that seemed "uncanny." He, such a bulwark of physical strength, to speak like that of a grave-site! It added one more to the contradictions she had seen in him.

  Several things were in her mind to say to
him, and not all of them pleasant. She had heard a little of the ideas current as to his Indian sympathies, and the doubt with which he was regarded in camp; and, while she defended him, she many times felt vexed that he cared so little about defending himself. And with the memory of the night before, and feminine comments at the ranch after he had gone, she made an attempt to storm his stubbornness during a short breathing-spell when they rested against the great bole of a tree.

  "Genesee, why don't you let the other folks at the ranch, or the camp, know you as I do?" was the first break, at which he laughed shortly.

  "They may know me the best of the two."

  "But they don't; I know they don't; you know they don't."

  "Speak for yourself," he suggested; "I'm not sure either way, and when a man can't bet on himself, it isn't fair to expect his friends to. You've been the only one of them all to pin faith to me, with not a thing to prove that you had reason for it; it's just out-and-out faith, nothing else. What they think doesn't count, nor what I've been; but if ever I get where I can talk to you, you'll know, may be, how much a woman's faith can help a man when he's down. But don't you bother your head over what they think. If I'm any good, they'll know it sometime; if I'm not, you'll know that, too. That's enough said, isn't it? And we'd better break away from here; we're about the foot of the mountain, I reckon."

  Then he took possession of her hand again, and led her on in the night; and she felt that her attempt had been a failure, except that it showed how closely he held her regard, and she was too human not to be moved by the knowledge. Yes, he was very improper, as much so as most men, only it had happened to be in a way that was shocking to tenderfeet lucky enough to have families and homes as safeguards against evil. He was very disreputable, and, socially, a great gulf would be marked between them by their friends. But in the hills, where the universe dwindled to earth, sky, and two souls, they were but man and woman; and all the puzzling things about him that were blameful things melted away, as the snow that fell on their faces. She felt his strong presence as a guard about her, and without doubt or hesitation she kept pace beside him.

  Once in the valley, she mounted Betty, and letting Mowitza follow, he walked ahead himself, to break the trail—a slow, slavish task, and the journey seemed endless. Hour after hour went by in that slow march—scarcely a word spoken, save when rest was necessary; and the snow never ceased falling—a widely different journey from that other time when he had hunted and found her.

  "You have your own time finding the trail for me when I get lost," she said once, as he lifted her to the saddle after a short rest.

  "You did the same thing for me one day, a good while ago," he answered simply.

  The night had reached its greatest darkness, in the hours that presage the dawn, when they crossed the last ridge, and knew that rest was at last within comparatively easy reach. Then for the first time, Genesee spoke of his self-imposed search.

  "I reckon you know I'm an Indian?" he said by way of preface.

  "I don't know anything of the sort."

  "But I am—a regular adopted son in the Kootenai tribe, four years old; so if they ask you if an Indian guide brought you home, you can tell them yes. Do you see?"

  "Yes, I see, but not the necessity. Why should I not tell them you brought me?"

  "May be you know, and may be you don't, that I'm not supposed to range far from camp. Kalitan was to go for you. Kalitan had some other work, and sent a Kootenai friend of his. The friend's name is Lamonti. Can you mind that? It means 'the mountain.' I come by it honest—it's a present Grey Eagle made me. If they ask questions about your guide, just put them off some way—tell them you don't know where he's gone to; and you won't. Now, can you do that?"

  "I can, of course; but I don't like to have you leave like this. You must be half-dead, and I—Jack, Jack, what would I have done without you!"

  He was so close, in the darkness, that in throwing out her hand it touched his face, one of the trivial accidents that turn lives sometimes. He caught it, pressing it to his lips, his eyes, his cheek.

  "Don't speak like that, unless you want to make a crazy man of me," he muttered. "I can't stand everything. God! girl, you'll never know, and I—can't tell you! For Christ sake, don't act as if you were afraid—the only one who has ever had faith in me! I think that would wake up all the devil you helped put asleep once. Here! give me your hand again, just once—just to show you trust me. I'll be worth it—I swear I will! I'll never come near you again!"

  The bonds under which he had held himself so long had broken at the touch of her hand and the impulsive tenderness of her appeal. Through the half sob in his wild words had burst all the repressed emotions of desolate days and lonely nights, and the force of them thrilled the girl, half-stunned her, for she could not speak. A sort of terror of his broken, passionate speech had drawn her quickly back from him, and she seemed to live hours in that second of indecision. All her audacity and self-possession vanished as a bulwark of straws before a flood. Her hands trembled, and a great compassion filled her for this alien by whose side she would have to stand against the world. That certainty it must have been that decided her, as it has decided many another woman, and ennobled many a love that otherwise would have been commonplace. And though her hands trembled, they trembled out toward him, and fell softly as a benediction on his upturned face.

  "I think you will come to me again," she said tremulously, as she leaned low from the saddle and felt tears as well as kisses on her hands, "and you are worth it now, I believe; worth more than I can give you."

  A half-hour later Rachel entered the door of the ranch, and found several of its occupants sleepless and awaiting some tidings of her. In the soft snow they had not heard her arrival until she stepped on the porch.

  "I've been all night getting here," she said, glancing at the clock that told an hour near dawn, "and I'm too tired to talk; so don't bother me. See how hoarse I am. No; Kalitan did not bring me. It was a Kootenai called Lamonti. I don't know where he has gone—wouldn't come in. Just keep quiet and let me get to bed, will you?"

  * * *

  CHAPTER II.

  A PHILOSOPHICAL HORSE-THIEF.

  An hour before dawn the wind came, hurtling down through the mountains and moaning along the valleys; before it drove the flying snow in great chilly sheets, as it was lifted from the high places and spread in every nook that would warrant its safe-keeping.

  Through its fitful gusts Genesee walked into camp, his tracks filled by the eager flakes as he left them. There seemed a strange alertness about the place, for so early an hour—even through the commotion, blissful and despairing, in his own breast, he noticed it as the guard hailed him, and when he replied, he heard from that individual an excited exclamation of astonishment.

  "By jolly, if it ain't Genesee!"

  "I reckon it is," he answered, and passed on, too tired, yet elated by his night's work, to care whether or not his absence had been commented on.

  The door of the shack had barely closed on him when one of the several lanterns that he had noticed floating like stars along the snow stopped at his door, then a knock, and the entrance of a very wide-awake looking corporal.

  "You are to report to Captain Holt at once," was the message he brought.

  "What's up?" and the boot that was half-way off was yanked on again.

  "That's all the message I was given."

  "The hell you say! Well, trot along."

  His own frowning perplexity was no more decided than that of Captain Holt, as he looked up to notice the entrance of the scout—and there was little of friendliness in the look.

  "You sent a man to say you wanted me."

  "Yes, I sent a man about two hours ago to say I wanted you," was the ironical reply. "You were not to be found. Have you any report to make?"

  "Not that I know of," he said curtly. A sort of quiet antagonism had always been felt between the chief of scouts and the new commander, but this was the first time any expr
ession had been given it, and Genesee's intolerance quickly responded to the manner of the officer that had in it both dislike and distrust.

  "Then you refuse to tell me where you spent the night?"

  The light in Genesee's eyes flashed sudden defiance.

  "Yes; if it comes to that, and that's the way you put it, I do."

  "You had better think twice before you give that answer," advised Captain Holt, his face paling with anger at the insubordination; "and another question to be put to you is, Where is the half-breed, your runner?"

  "I don't know as that concerns you, either," answered Genesee coolly. "He is my Indian, and neither of us belonging to the United States Army, we can leave camp when it suits us. But I don't mind telling you I sent him to Holland's yesterday."

  "For what purpose?"

  "My own business."

  "The same thing that took you from camp at three yesterday and kept you out all night?"

  "Just so."

  "Then, since you refuse to answer a very necessary question, you may—until I have an opportunity of investigating an absence that is, to say the least, suspicious—you may consider yourself under arrest."

  "What in—"

  "For horse-stealing," finished the Captain calmly.

  Genesee's hand dropped to his belt in a suggestive manner, and from the door two guards stepped forward. He turned to look at them, and the ridiculous idea of his arrest quelled the quick rage that had flashed up in his face.

  "You needn't have troubled yourself with these protectors," he remarked, "for I reckon there isn't much I'd want to do that they would stop me from; and as for you—this is a piece of dirty work for some end. I'm ready to be put under arrest, just to see some fun when your commander gets back. And now may be you'll just tell me whose horse I stole?"

  "It is not one horse, but one-half the stock belonging to the company, that was run off by your Kootenai friends last night," replied Captain Holt grimly; "and as your disappearance was likely helpful to them, and a matter of mystery to the command, you will be debarred from visiting them again until the matter is investigated. Even the explanation is more than your insolence deserves. You can go back to your quarters."