"Does he swear?" queried Fred.
"Does he? My child, you would have a finely-trained imagination if you could conceive the variety of expressions by which he can consign a citizen to the winter resort from which all good citizens keep free. His profanity, they say, is only equaled by his immorality. But, ah—what a soldier he would make! He is the sort of a man that men would walk right up to cannon with—even if they detested him personally."
"And a man needs no fine attributes or high morality to wield that sort of influence, does he?" asked Rachel, and walked deliberately away before any reply could be made.
But she was no more confident than they of his unimpeachable worth. There was the horse-thieving still unexplained; he had not even denied it to her. And she came to the conclusion that she herself was sadly lacking in the material for orthodox womanhood, since the more proof she had of his faults, the more solidly she took her position for his defense. It had in it something of the same blind stubbornness that governed his likes and dislikes, and that very similarity might have accounted for the sort of understanding that had so long existed between them. And she had more than the horse-stealing to puzzle over. She had that letter he had thrust in her hand and told her to read; such a pleading letter, filled with the heart-sickness of a lonely woman. She took it out and re-read it that time when she walked away from their comments; and reading over the lines, and trying to read between them, she was sorely puzzled:
"Dear Jack: I wrote you of my illness weeks ago, but the letter must have been lost, or else your answer, for I have not heard a word from you, and I have wanted it more than I can tell you. I am better, and our little Jack has taken such good care of me. He is so helpful, so gentle; and do you know, dear, he grows to look more like you every day. Does that seem strange? He does not resemble me in the least. You will think me very exacting, I suppose, when I tell you that such a child, and such a home as you have given me, does not suffice for my content. I know you will think me ungrateful, but I must speak of it to you. I wrote you before, but no answer has come. If I get none to this, I will go to find you—if I am strong enough. If I am not, I shall send Jack. He is so manly and strong, I know he could go. I will know then, at least, if you are living. I feel as if I am confessing a fault to you when I tell you I have heard from him at last—and more, that I was so glad to hear!
"Jack—dear Jack—he has never forgotten. He is free now; would marry me yet if it were possible. Write to me—tell me if it can ever be. I know how weak you will think me. Perhaps my late ill-health has made me more so; but I am hungry for the sound of the dear voice, and I am so alone since your father died. You will never come back; and you know, Jack, how loneliness always was so dreadful to me—even our boy is not enough. He does not understand. Come back, or write to me. Let my boy know his father, or else show me how to be patient; this silence is so terrible to Your Wife.
"Jack, what a mockery that word looks—yet I am grateful."
This was the letter he had told her to read and give to Stuart, if he never returned; but she gave it to no one. She mentioned it to no one, only waited to see if he ever came back, and with each reading of that other woman's longings, there grew stronger in her the determination that his life belonged to the writer of that letter and her child—her boy, who looked like him. Surely there was a home and an affection that should cure him of this wild, semi-civilized life he was leading. She was slipping away that almighty need he had shown of herself. She grimly determined that all remembrance of it must be put aside; it was such an unheard-of, reasonless sort of an attraction anyway, and if she really had any influence over him, it should be used to make him answer that letter as it should be answered, and straighten out the strange puzzles in it. All this she determined she would tell him—when he got back.
* * *
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE HEIGHTS.
While they commented, and wondered, and praised, and found fault with him, the day drifted into darkness, the darkness into a dreary dawn; and through all changes of the hours the outlaw stalked, with sometimes his ghastly companion bound to the saddle, and then again he would remount, holding Snowcap in his arms—but seldom halting, never wavering; and Mowitza, who seemed more than ever a familiar spirit, forged ahead as if ignoring the fact of hunger and scanty herbage to be found, her sturdy persistence suggesting a realization of her own importance.
A broad trail was left for them, one showing that the detachment of braves and the horses of the troops had returned under forced march to bear the news to their village—and such news!
The man's dark face hardened and more than one of those expressive maledictions broke from him as he thought over it. All his sympathies were with them. For five years they had been as brethren to him; never had any act of treachery touched him through them. To their people he was not Genesee the outcast, the immoral, the suspected. He was Lamonti—of the mountains—like their own blood.
He was held wise in their councils, and his advice had weight.
He could have ruled their chief, and so their nation, had he been ambitious for such control.
He was their adopted son, and had never presumed on their liking, though he knew there was little in their slender power that would not have been his had he desired it.
Now he knew he would be held their enemy. His influence had encouraged the sending of that message and the offered braves to the commander of the troops. Would they grant him a hearing now? or would they shoot him down, as the soldier had shot Snowcap, with his message undelivered?
Those questions, and the retrospection back of them, were with him as he went upward into the mountains to the north.
Another night was falling slowly, and the jewels of the far skies one by one slipped from their ether casket, and shone with impressive serenity on the crusted snow. Along the last ridge Mowitza bore for the last time her double burden. There was but a slope to descend, a sheltered cove to reach, and Snowcap would be given back to his kindred.
The glittering surface of the white carpet warmed into reflected lights as the moon, a soft-footed, immature virgin, stole after the stars and let her gleams be wooed and enmeshed in the receptive arms of the whispering pine. Not a sound broke through the peace of the heights. In their sublime isolation, they lift souls as well as bodies above the commonplace, and the rider, the stubborn keeper of so many of their secrets, threw back his head with a strange smile in his eyes as the last summit was reached—and reached in the light of peace. Was it an omen of good? He thought of that girl back in the valley who was willing to share this life of the hills with him. All things beautiful made him think of her, and the moon-kissed night was grand, up there above where men lived. He thought of her superb faith, not in what he was, but in what her woman's instinct told her it was possible for him to be. What a universe of loves in human hearts revolves about those unseen, unproven substances!
He thought of the time when she had lain in his arms as Snowcap was lying, and he had carried her over the hills in the moonlight. He was bitterly cold, but through the icy air there came the thrill and flush of that long-past temptation. He wondered what she would say when they told her how he had used his freedom. The conviction of her approval again gave that strange smile of elation to his eyes; and the cold and hunger were ignored, and his fatigue fell from him. And with the tenderness that one gives to a sleeping child, he adjusted with his wounded hands the blanket that slipped from the dead boy, raising one of the rigid arms the better to shroud it in the gay colors.
Then the peace of the heights was broken by a sharp report; the whiteness of the moonlight was crossed by the quick, red flash of death and Mowitza stopped still in her tracks, while her master, with that dead thing clasped close in his arms, lunged forward on her neck.
* * *
CHAPTER VII.
A REBEL.
Within the confines of Camp Kootenai there was a ripple of rejoicing. At last, after four days lost because of the snow, Major Dre
yer had arrived, pushing on with all possible haste after meeting the runner—and, to the bewilderment of all, he rode into camp on one of the horses stolen almost a week ago.
"No mystery about it—only a little luck," he said in explanation. "I found him at Holland's as I came up. A white man belonging to the Blackfeet rode him in there several nights ago. The white man got drunk, picked a row, and got his pay for it. They gave him grave-room down there, and in the morning discovered that the beast had our brand, so gave him up to us as we came through."
Needless to say that this account was listened to with unusual interest. A man belonging to the Blackfeet! That proved Genesee's theory of which he had spoken to Captain Holt—the theory that was so thoroughly discredited.
When word was brought that the Major's party had been sighted from the south, Fred and Rachel could hardly wait for the saddles to be thrown on the horses.
Tillie caught the fever of impatience, and rode down beside Hardy. Stuart was not about. The days since Genesee's departure he had put in almost entirely with the scouts stationed to note any approach from the north; he was waiting for that coming back. Kalitan, for the first time since Genesee's flight, came into camp. The man who had seemed the friend of his friend was again in command; and he showed his appreciation of the difference by presenting himself in person beside Rachel, to whom he had allied himself in a way that was curious to the rest, and was so devotionally serious to himself.
"Then, perhaps it was not that Genesee who stole the horses, after all," broke in Fred, as her father told the story.
"Genesee!—nonsense!" said the Major brusquely. "We must look into that affair at once," and he glanced at the Captain; "but if that man's a horse-thief, I've made a big mistake—and I won't believe it until I have proof."
As yet there had been no attempt at any investigation of affairs, only an informal welcoming group, and Fred, anxious to tell a story that she thought astonishing, recounted breathlessly the saving of the men by way of the mine, and of the gloves and the hands worn in that night's work, and last, of the digging up of that body and carrying it away to the mountains.
Her father, at first inclined to check her voluble recital that would come to him in a more official form, refrained, as the practical array of facts showing through her admiration summed themselves up in a mass that echoed his convictions.
"And that is the man suspected of stealing a few horses? Good God! what proof have you that will weigh against courage like that?"
"Major, he scarcely denied it," said the Captain, in extenuation of their suspicions. "He swore the Kootenais did not do it, and that's all he would say. He was absent all the afternoon and all the night of the thievery, and refused to give any account whatever of his absence, even when I tried to impress him with the seriousness of the situation. The man's reputation, added to his suspicious absence, left me but one thing to do—I put him under guard."
"That does look strange," agreed the Major, with, a troubled face; "refused—"
He was interrupted by a sound from Rachel, who had not spoken after the conversation turned to Genesee. She came forward with a low cry, trembling and passionate, doubt and hope blending in her face.
"Did you say the night the horses were stolen?" she demanded. All looked at her wonderingly, and Kalitan instinctively slid a little nearer.
"Yes, it was in the night," answered the Captain, "about two o'clock; but you surely knew about it?"
"I? I knew nothing," she burst out furiously; "they lied to me—all of you. You told me it was in the morning. How dared you—how dared you do it?"
The Major laid a restraining hand on her arm; he could feel that she was trembling violently. She had kept so contemptuously cool through all those days of doubt, but she was cool no longer; her face was white, but it looked a white fury.
"What matter about the hour, Miss Rachel?" asked the commander; and she shook off his hand and stepped back beside Kalitan, as if putting herself where Genesee had put himself—with the Indians.
"Because I could have told where Jack Genesee was that night, if they had not deceived me. He was with me."
Tillie gave a little cry of wonder and contrition. She saw it all now.
"But—but you said it was a Kootenai who brought you home," she protested feebly; "you told us Lamonti."
"He is a Kootenai by adoption, and he is called Lamonti," said the girl defiantly; "and the night those horses were run off, he was with me from an hour after sundown until four o'clock in the morning."
That bold statement had a damaging ring to it—unnecessarily so; and the group about her, and the officers and men back of them, looked at her curiously.
"Then, since you can tell this much in his favor, can you tell why he himself refused to answer so simple a question?" asked Major Dreyer kindly.
That staggered her for a moment, as she put her hand up in a helpless way over her eyes, thinking—thinking fast. She realized now what it meant, the silence that was for her sake—the silence that was not broken even to her. And a mighty remorse arose for her doubt—the doubt she had let him see; yet he had not spoken! She raised her eyes and met the curious glances of the men, and that decided her. They were the men who had from the first condemned him—been jealous of the commander's trust.
"Yes, I think I can tell you that, too," she said frankly. "The man is my friend. I was lost in the snow that night; he found me, and it took us all night to get home. He knows how these people think of him;" and her eyes spared none. "They have made him feel that he is an outcast among them. They have made him feel that a friendship or companionship with him is a discredit to any woman—oh, I know! They think so now, in spite of what he has done for them. He knows that. He is very generous, and wanted, I suppose, to spare me; and I—I was vile enough to doubt him," she burst out. "Even when I brought him his horse, I half believed the lies about him, and he knew it, and never said a word—not one word."
"When you brought him his horse?" asked the Major, looking at her keenly, though not unkindly.
Her remorse found a new vent in the bravado with which she looked at them all and laughed.
"Yes," she said defiantly, as if there was a certain comfort in braving their displeasure, and proving her rebellion to their laws; "yes, I brought him his horse—not by accident either! I brought him brandy and provisions; I brought him revolvers and ammunition. I helped him to escape, and I cut the bonds your guards had fastened him with. Now, what are you going to do about it?"
Tillie gasped with horror. She did not quite know whether they would shoot her as a traitor, or only imprison her; but she knew military law could be a very dreadful thing, and her fears were extravagant.
As for Miss Fred, her eyes were sparkling. With the quick deductions of her kind, she reasoned that, without the escape that night, the men would have died in that trap in the hills, and a certain delicious meeting and its consequences—of which she was waiting to tell the Major,—would never have been hers. Her feelings were very frankly expressed, as she stepped across to the self-isolated rebel and kissed her.
"You're a darling—and a plucky girl," she said warmly; "and you never looked so pretty in your life."
The defiant face did not relax, even at that intelligence. Her eyes were on the commander, her judge. And he was looking with decided interest at her.
"Yours is a very grave offense, Miss Rachel," he said, with deliberation that struck added terrors to Tillie's heart. "The penalty of contriving the escape of prisoners is one I do not like to mention to you; but since the man in this case was innocent, and I take your evidence in proof—well, that might be some extenuation of the act."
"I didn't know he was innocent when I helped him," she broke in; "I thought the horses were stolen after he left me."
"That makes it more serious, certainly;" but his eyes were not at all serious. "And since you seem determined to allow nothing in extenuation of your own actions, I can only say that—that I value very highly the forty men
whose lives were saved to us by that escape; and when I see Mr. Genesee, I will thank him in the warmest way at my command;" and he held out his hand to the very erect, very defiant rebel.
She could scarcely believe it when she heard the words of praise about her; when one man after another of that rescued crowd came forward to shake hands with her—and Hardy almost lifted her off her feet to kiss her. "By George! I'm proud of you, Rachel," he said impulsively. "You are plucky enough to—to be Genesee himself."
The praise seemed a very little thing to her. Her bravado was over; she felt as if she must cry if they did not leave her alone. Of what use were words, if he should never come back—never know that he was cleared of suspicion? If they had so many kind words now, why had they not found some for him when he needed them? She did not know the uncompromising surliness that made him so difficult of approach to many people, especially any who showed their own feeling of superiority, as most of them did, to a squaw man.
She heard that term from the Major, a moment after he had shaken hands with her. He had asked what were the other suspicions mentioned against Genesee; she could not hear the answer—they had moved a little apart from her—but she could hear the impatience with which he broke in on their speech.
"A squaw man!—well, what if he is?" he asked, with a serene indifference to the social side of the question. "What difference does it make whether the man's wife has been red, or white, or black, so long as she suited him? There are two classes of squaw men, as there are of other men on the frontier—the renegades and the usual percentage of honest and dishonest citizens. You've all apparently been willing to understand only the renegades. I've been along the border for thirty years, and some of the bravest white men I've ever seen had Indian wives. Some of the men whose assistance in Indian wars has been invaluable to us are ranchmen whose children are half-breeds, and who have taught their squaws housework and English at the same time, and made them a credit to any nation. There's a heap of uncalled-for prejudice against a certain class of those men; and, so far as I've noticed, the sneak who abandons his wife and children back in the States, or borrows the wife of someone else to make the trip out here with, is the specimen that is first to curl his lip at the squaw man. That girl over there strikes me as showing more common sense than the whole community; she gave him the valuation of a man."
Told in the Hills Page 28