Читать книгу Told in the Hills: A Novel - Ryan Marah Ellis - Страница 2

"The de'il tak' them wi' their weeman folk, whose nerves are too delicate for a squaw man, or an Injun guide. I'd tak' no heed o' them if I was well, an' I'll do less now I'm plagued wi' this reminder o' that grizzly's hug. It gives me many's the twinge whilst out lookin' to the traps."

"Where's your gallantry, MacDougall?" asked a deep, rather musical voice from the cabin door; "and your national love for the 'winsome sex,' as I've heard you call it? If ladies are with them you can't refuse."

"Can I not? Well, I can that same now," said the first speaker, emphasizing his speech by the vim with which he pitched a broken-handled skillet into the cupboard – a cupboard made of a wooden box. "Mayhaps you think I haven't seen a white woman these six months, I'll be a breakin' my neck to get to their camp across there. Well, I will not; they may be all very fine, no doubt – folk from the East; but ye well know a lot o' tenderfeet in the bush are a sight worse to tak' the care of than the wild things they'll be tryin' to hunt. 'A man's a fool who stumbles over the same stone twice,' is an old, true sayin', an' I know what I'm talkin' of. It's four years this autumn since I was down in the Walla Walla country, an' there was a fine party from the East, just as these are; an' they would go up into the Blue Mountains, an' they would have me for a guide; an' if the Lord'll forgive me for associatin' with sich a pack o' lunatics for that trip, I'll never be caught wi' the same bait again."

"What did they do to you?" asked the voice, with a tinge of amusement in it.

"To me? They did naught to me but pester me wi' questions of insane devisin'. Scarce a man o' them could tether a beast or lasso one that was astray. They had a man servant, a sort o' flunky, to wait on them and he just sat around like a bump on a log, and looked fearsomely for Injuns an' grizzlies. They would palaver until all hours in the night, about the scientific causes of all things we came across. Many a good laugh I might have had, if I had na been disgusted wi' the pretenses o' the poor bodies. Why, they knew not a thing but the learnin' o' books. They were from the East – down East, they said; that is, the Southeast, I suppose they meant to say; and their flunky said they were well-to-do at home, and very learned, the poor fools! Well, I'll weary myself wi' none others o' the same ilk."

"You're getting cranky, Mac, from being too much alone;" and the owner of the voice lounged lazily up from the seat of the cabin door, and stood looking in at the disgusted Scotchman, bending ever so slightly a dark, well-shaped head that was taller than the cross-piece above the door.

"Am I, now?" asked the old man, getting up stiffly from filling a pan of milk for the cat. "Well, then, I have a neighbor across on the Maple range that is subject o' late to the same complaint, but from a wide difference o' reason;" and he nodded his head significantly at the man in the door, adding: "An' there's a subject for a debate, Jack Genesee, whether loneliness is worse on the disposition than the influence o' wrong company."

Jack Genesee straightened out of his lounging attitude, and stepped back from the door-way with a decision that would impress a man as meaning business.

"None o' that, MacDougall," he said curtly, dropping his hand with a hillman's instinct to the belt where his revolvers rested. "I reckon you and I will be better friends through minding our own business and keeping to our own territory in future;" and whistling to a beautiful brown mare that was browsing close to the cabin, he turned to mount her, when the old man crossed the floor quickly and laid a sinewy, brown hand on his arm.

"Bide a bit, Genesee," he said, his native accent always creeping upward in any emotion. "Friends are rare and scarce in this Chinook land. You're a bit hasty in your way, and mayhaps I'm a bit curious in mine; but I'll no let ye leave Davy MacDougall's like that just for the want o' sayin' I'm regretful at havin' said more than I should o' you and yours. I canna lose a friend o' four years for a trifle like that."

The frankness of the old man's words made the other man drop the bridle and turn back with outstretched hand.

"That's all right, Mac," he said, heartily; "say no more about it. I am uglier than the devil to get along with sometimes, and you're about straight when you say I'm a crank; only – well, it's nobody's fault but my own."

"No, o' course not," said MacDougall in a conciliatory tone as he went back to his dish-washing at the table – the dishes were tin pans and cups, and the dish-pan was an iron pot – "to be sure not; but the half-breeds are pizen in a man's cabin, an' that Talapa, wi' the name that's got from a prairie wolf an' the Injun de'il, is well called – a full-blood Injun is easier to manage, my lad; an' then," he added, quizzically, "I'm but givin' ye the lay o' the land where I've fought myself, an' mayhaps got wounded."

The "lad," who was about thirty-five, laughed heartily at this characteristic confession. There was evidently some decided incongruity between the old Scotchman's statement and his quaint housewifery, as he wrapped a cloth reduced to strings around a fork and washed out a coffee-pot with the improvised mop. Something there was in it that this man Genesee appreciated, and his continued laughter drew the beautiful mare again to his side, slipping her velvety nose close to his ear, and muzzling there like a familiar spirit that had a right to share her master's emotions.

"All right, Mowitza," he said in a promising tone; "we'll hit the bush by and by. But old sulky here is slinging poisoned arrows at our Kloocheman. We can't stand that, you know. We don't like cooking our own grub, do we, Mowitza? Shake your head and tell him 'halo' – that's right. Skookum Kiutan! Skookum, Mowitza!"

And the man caressed the silky brown head, and murmured to her the Indian jargon of endearment and praise, and the mare muzzled closer and whinnied an understanding of her master. MacDougall put away the last pan, threw a few knots of cedar on the bit of fire in the stone fire-place, and came to the door just as the sun, falling back of the western mountains, threw a flood of glory about the old cabin of the mountaineer. The hill-grass back of it changed from uncertain green to spears of amber as the soft September winds stole through it. Away below in the valley, the purple gloom of dark spruces was burying itself in night's shadows. Here and there a poison-vine flashed back defiance under its crimson banners, and again a white-limbed aspen shone like a shapely ghost from between lichen-covered bowlders. But slowly the gloaming crept upward until the shadow-line fell at the cabin door, and then up, up, past spruce and cedar, past the scrub of the dwarf growths, past the invisible line that the snakes will not cross, on up to the splintered crest, where the snows glimmer in the sunshine, and about which the last rays of the sun linger and kiss and fondle, long after a good-bye has been given to the world beneath.

Such was but one of the many recurring vistas of beauty which the dwellers of the northern hills are given to delight in – if they care to open their eyes and see the glorious smile with which the earth ever responds to the kiss of God.

MacDougall had seen many of the grand panoramas which day and night on Scot's mountain give one, and he stood in the door unheeding this one. His keen eyes, under their shaggy brows, were directed to the younger man's bronzed face.

"There ye go!" he said, half peevishly; "ye jabber Chinook to that Talapa and to the mare until it's a wonder ye know any English at all; an' when ye be goin' back where ye belong, it'll be fine, queer times ye'll have with your ways of speech."

Genesee only laughed shortly – an Indian laugh, in which there is no melody.

"I don't reckon I belong anywhere, by this time, except in this Chinook region; consequently," he added, looking up in the old man's interested face, "I'm not likely to be moving anywhere, if that's what you're trying to find out."

MacDougall made a half-dissenting murmur against trying to find out anything, but Genesee cut him short without ceremony.

"The fact is, Mac," he continued; "you are a precious old galoot – a regular nervous old numbskull. You've been as restless as a newly-caught grizzly ever since I went down to Cœur d'Alene, two weeks ago – afraid I was going to cut loose from Tamahnous Peak and pack my traps and go back to the diggin's; is that it? Don't lie about it. The whole trip wasn't worth a good lie, and all it panned out for me was empty pockets."

"Lord! lad, ye canna mean to say ye lost – '

"Every damned red," finished Mr. Genesee complacently.

"An' how – "

"Cards and mixed drinks," he said, laconically. "Angels in the wine-rooms, and a slick individual at the table who had a better poker hand than I had. How's that as a trade for six months' work? How does it pan out in the balance with half-breeds?"

Evidently it staggered MacDougall. "It is no much like ye to dissipate, Genesee," he said, doubtfully. "O' course a man likes to try his chance on the chips once in a way, and to the kelpies o' the drinkin' places one must leave a few dollars, but the mixin' o' drinks or the muddlin' o' the brains is no natural to ye; it may be a divarsion after the hill life, but there's many a kind that's healthier."

"You're a confounded old humbug," said Genesee coolly; "you preach temperance to me, and get drunk as a fiddler all alone here by yourself – not much Scotch in that way of drinking, I can tell you. Hello! who's that?"

MacDougall leaned forward and peered down the path where the sound of a horse's feet were heard coming around the bend.

"It's that man o' Hardy's comin' again about a guide, I have na doubt. I'll send him across Seven-mile Creek to Tyee-Kamooks. They can get a Siwash guide from him, or they can lose themsel's for all me," he said, grumpily, incited thereto, no doubt, by Genesee's criticism of his habits. He often grumbled that his friend from the Maple range was mighty "tetchy" about his own faults, and mighty cool in his opinions of others.

A dark, well-built horse came at an easy, swinging pace out of the gloom of the spruce boughs and over the green sward toward the cabin; his rider, a fair, fine-looking fellow, in a ranchman's buckskin suit, touched his hat ever so lightly in salute, a courtesy the others returned, Genesee adding the Chinook word that is either salutation or farewell, "Klahowya, stranger," and the old man giving the more English speech of "Good evening; won't ye light, stranger?"

"No; obliged to you, but haven't time. I suppose I'm speaking to Mr. MacDougall," and he took his eyes from the tall, dark form of Genesee to address his speech to the old trapper.

"Yes, I'm Davy MacDougall, an' I give a guess you're from the new sheep ranch that's located down Kootenai Park; you're one of Hardy's men."

"No; I'm Hardy."

"Are ye, now?" queried the old fellow in surprise. "I expected to see an older man – only by the cause of hearin' you were married, I suppose. Well, now, I'm right glad to meet wi' a new neighbor – to think of a ranch but a bit of ten miles from Scot's Mountain, an' a white family on it, too! Will ye no' light an' have a crack at a pipe an' a glass?"

Hardy himself was evidently making a much better impression on MacDougall than the messenger who had come to the cabin in the morning.

"No, partner, not any for me," answered the young ranchman, but with so pleasant a negative that even a Westerner could not but accept graciously such a refusal. "I just rode up from camp myself to see you about a guide for a small party over into the west branch of the Rockies. Ivans, who came to see you this morning, tells me that you are disabled yourself – "

"Yes; that is, I had a hug of a grizzly two weeks back that left the ribs o' my right side a bit sore; but – "

The old man hesitated; evidently his reluctance to act as guide to the poor fools was weakening. This specimen of an Eastern man was not at all the style of the tourists who had disgusted him so.

"An' so I told your man I thought I could na guide you," he continued in a debatable way, at which Hardy's blonde mustache twitched suspiciously, and Genesee stooped to fasten a spur that had not needed attention before; for the fact was Mac had felt "ower cranky" that morning, and the messenger had been a stupid fellow who irritated him until he swore by all the carpenter's outfit of a certain workman in Nazareth that he would be no guide for "weemen folk and tenderfeet" in the hills. His vehemence had caused the refusal of Ivans to make a return trip, and Hardy, remembering Ivans' account, was amused, and had an idea that the dark, quiet fellow with the musical voice was amused as well.

"Yes," agreed the stranger; "I understood you could not come, but I wanted to ask if you could recommend an Indian guide. I had Jim Kale engaged – he's the only white man I know in this region; the men on my place are all from south of the Flathead country. He sent me word yesterday he couldn't come for a week – confound these squaw men! He's gone to hunt caribou with his squaw's people, so I brought my party so far myself, but am doubtful of the trail ahead. One of the ladies is rather nervous about Indians, and that prevented me from getting a guide from them at first; but if we continue, she must accustom herself to Montana surroundings."

"That's the worst o' the weemen folk when it comes to the hills," broke in MacDougall, "they've over easy to be frightened at shadows; a roof an' four walls is the best stoppin' place for a' o' them."

The young ranchman laughed easily.

"I don't believe you have known many of our Kentucky women, Mr. MacDougall; they are not hot-house plants, by any means."

Genesee pushed a wide-brimmed light hat back from his face a little, and for the first time joined the conversation.

"A Kentucky party, did you say, sir?" he queried, with half-careless interest.

"Yes," said Hardy, turning toward him; "relatives of mine from back East, and I wanted to give them a taste of Montana hill life, and a little hunting. But I can't go any farther into the hills alone, especially as there are three ladies in the party; and a man can't take many risks when he has them to consider."

"That's so," said Genesee, with brief sympathy; "big gang?"

"No – only six of us. My sister and her husband, and a cousin, a young lady, are the strangers. Then one of the men off my ranch who came to look after the pack-mules, and my wife and self. I have an extra horse for a guide if I can pick one up."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you could," said Genesee reflectively; "the woods are full of them, if you want Indian guides, and if you don't – well, it doesn't seem the right thing to let visitors leave the country disappointed, especially ladies, and I reckon I might take charge of your outfit for a week or so."

MacDougall nearly dropped his pipe in his surprise at the offer.

"Well, I'll be – " he began; but Genesee turned on him.

"What's the matter with that?" he asked, looking at Mac levelly, with a glance that said: "Keep your mouth shut." "If I want to turn guide and drop digging in that hill back there, why shouldn't I? It'll be the 'divarsion' you were suggesting a little while back; and if Mr. Hardy wants a guide, give me a recommend, can't you?"

"Do you know the country northwest of here?" asked Hardy eagerly. It was plain to be seen he was pleased at his "find." "Do you live here in the Chinook country? You may be a neighbor of mine, but I haven't the pleasure of knowing your name."

"That's Mac's fault," said the other fellow coolly; "he's master of ceremonies in these diggin's, and has forgotten his business. They call me Genesee Jack mostly, and I know the Kootenai hills a little."

"Indeed, then, he does Mr. Hardy," said MacDougall, finding his voice. "Ye'll find no Siwash born on the hills who knows them better than does Genesee, only he's been bewitched like, by picks and shovels an' a gulch in the Maple range, for so long it's a bit strange to see him actin' as guide; but you're a lucky man to be gettin' him, Mr. Hardy, I'll tell ye that much."

"I am willing to believe it," said Hardy frankly. "Could you start at once with us, in the morning?"

"I reckon so."

"I will furnish you a good horse," began the ranchman; but Genesee interrupted, shaking his head with a gesture of dissent.

"No, I think not," he said in the careless, musical voice that yet could be so decided in its softness; and he whistled softly, as a cricket chirrups, and the brown mare came to him with long, cat-like movements of the slender limbs, dropping her head to his shoulder.

"This bit of horse-flesh is good enough for me," he said, slipping a long, well-shaped hand over the silky cheek; "an' where I go, Mowitza goes – eh, pet?"

The mare whinnied softly as acknowledgment of the address, and Hardy noticed with admiration the fine points in her sinewy, supple frame.

"Mowitza," he repeated. "That in Chinook means the deer, does it not – or the elk; which is it? I haven't been here long enough to pick up much of the jargon."

"Well, then, ye'll be hearin' enough of it from Genesee," broke in MacDougall. "He'll be forgettin' his native language in it if he lives here five years longer; an' – "

"There, you've said enough," suggested Genesee. "After giving a fellow a recommend for solid work, don't spoil it by an account of his fancy accomplishments. You're likely to overdo it. Yes, Mowitza means a deer, and this one has earned her name. We'll both be down at your camp by sun-up to-morrow; will that do?"

"It certainly will," answered Hardy in a tone of satisfaction. "And the folks below will be mighty glad to know a white man is to go with us. Jim Kale rather made them doubtful of squaw men, and my sister is timid about Indians as steady company through the hills. I must get back and give them the good news. At sun-up to-morrow, Mr. Genesee?"

"At sun-up to-morrow."