Читать книгу The "Wild West" Collection - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 12

The fact was that the well-ordered establishment of Mrs. Huzzard was a grievance and a thorn in the side of certain womankind, who dwelt along the main street and kept open drinking saloons seven days in the week. They would have bought ribbons and feathers from her, and as a milliner thought no more about her, or even if she had opened a hotel, with a bar attached, they would have been willing to greet her as a fellow worker, and all would have had even chances. But her effrontery in opening an eating house, where only water--pure or adulterated with tea or coffee--was drunk--Well, her immaculate pretensions, to use the vernacular of one of the disgusted, "made them sick."

It may have been their dislike was made more pronounced because of the fact that the more sober-minded men turned gladly to the irreproachable abode of Mrs. Huzzard, and the "bosses" of several "gangs" of workmen had arranged with her for their meals. Besides, the river men directed any strangers to her house; whereas, before, the saloons had been the first point of view from which travelers or miners had seen Sinna Ferry. All these grievances had accumulated through the weeks, until the climax was capped when the report went abroad that a dance was to take place at the sickeningly correct restaurant, and that only the _elit_ of the settlement were expected to attend.

Thereupon some oaths had been exchanged in a desultory fashion over the bars at Mustang Kate's and Dutch Lena's; and derisive comments made as to Mrs. Huzzard and her late charge, the girl in the Indian dress. Some of the boys, who owned musical instruments--a banjo and a mouth organ--were openly approached by bribery to keep away from the all too perfect gathering, so that there might be a dearth of music. But the boys with the musical instruments evaded the bribes, and even hinted aloud their desire to dance once anyway with the new girl of the curly hair and the Indian dress.

This decision increased somewhat the muttering of the storm brewing; and when Dutch Lena's own man indiscreetly observed that he would have to drop in line, too, if all the good boys were going, then indeed did the cyclone of woman's wrath break over that particular branch of Hades. Lena's man was scratched a little with a knife before quiet was restored, and there had been some articles of furniture flung around promiscuously; also some violent language.

Overton divined somewhat of all this, knowing as he did the material of the neighborhood, though no actual history of events came to his ears. And 'Tana, presenting herself to his notice in all the glory of her party dress, felt her enthusiasm cool as he looked at her moodily. He would have liked to shut her away from all the vulgar gaze and comment he knew her charming face would win for her. His responsibilities as a guardian forced on him so many new phases of thought. He had never before given the social side of Sinna Ferry much consideration; but he thought fast and angrily as he looked down on the slim, girlish, white-draped figure and the lovely appealing face turned upward to him.

"You don't like it--you don't think it is pretty?" she asked, and her mouth was a little tremulous. "I tried so hard. I sewed part of it myself, and Mrs. Huzzard said--"

Lyster arose from a seat by the window. He had entered the room but a moment before, and now lounged toward her with critical eyes.

"Mrs. Huzzard said you were enchanting in your new gown--is not that it?" he asked, and then frowned at Overton in a serio-comic way. "And lives there a man with soul so dead that he cannot perceive the manifold beauties arranged for his inspection? Well, you know I told you I appreciate you much more than he will ever do; so--"

"What nonsense you are talking!" said Overton, irritably. "Of course, the dress is all right. I don't know much about such things, though; so my opinion is not worth much. But I don't think little girls should be told so much of their charms, Lyster. They are too likely to be made think that prettiness is the only thing worth living for."

He smiled at 'Tana to soften the severity of his speech; but she was not looking at him just then, and so missed the softening accompaniment. She felt it was herself who was taken to task instead of Lyster, and stood with drooped, darkening face until the door closed behind Overton.

"That is your fault," she burst out. "He--he might have thought it was nice, if you hadn't been here with your fool speeches. You just go around laughing at everything, Mr. Max Lyster, and you're just as empty as that china cat on the mantel, and it's hollow. I'd like to hit you sometimes when you say your nice, tantalizing words--that's what _I'd_ like to do; and maybe some day I will."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you did," he agreed, and stepped back out of range of her clenched brown hands. "Whew! what a trial you'd be to a guardian who had nerves. You are spoiling your pretty face with that satanic expression. Now, why should you make war on me? I'm sure I am one of your most devoted servants."

"You are your own devoted servant," she retorted, "and you'll never be any other person's."

"Well, now, I'm not so sure of that," he said, and looked at her smilingly. All her anger did not keep him from seeing what a wondrous difference all that white, billowy lawn made in the girl whom he had taken for a squaw that first day when he saw her swimming the Kootenai.

She looked taller, slighter, with such lovable curves in the girlish form, and the creamy neck and arms gleaming through the thin material. No ornaments or ribbons broke the whiteness of her garb--nothing but the Indian belt of beads that Overton had given her, and in it were reddish tints and golden brown the color of her hair.

To be sure, the cheeks were a little tanned by the weather, and the little hand was browner than need be for beauty; but, for all that, he realized, as Overton had seemingly not done, that the girl, when dressed as dainty girlhood should be, was very pretty, indeed.

"I am willing to sign myself your bond slave from this hour, if that will lessen your anger against me," he protested. "Just think, I leave Sinna Ferry to-morrow. How shall I do penance until then?"

"'It may be for years, and it may be forever, Then why art thou silent, O voice of my heart?'"

She pouted and frowned a little at his warbling, though a smile eventually touched her lips, and speculation shone in her eyes.

"I _will_ make you do penance," she declared, "and right now, too. I haven't any money, but I'll put up my moccasins against five dollars in a game of poker."

"You--play poker?"

"I'll try," she said briefly, and her eyes sparkled; "I'll play you and ask no favors."

"Your moccasins are not worth five."

"Maybe not. Call it two-fifty then and promise me two hands at that."

"How sure you are to win!" he laughed, well pleased that she was diverted from her quick displeasure. "We'll call it five against the moccasins. Here are the cards. And what am I to do with those little moccasins, even if I do win them?"

"Oh, I'll take care of the moccasins!" she said, easily. "I guess they'll not trouble you much, Mr. Lyster. Cut for deal?"

He nodded, and they commenced their game there alone in Mrs. Huzzard's most respectable _caf_. Mrs. Huzzard herself did not approve of card playing. No one but Captain Leek had, as yet, been allowed that privilege. His playing she had really begun to look upon as almost moral in its effects, since he pursued it as the most innocent of pastimes, never betting more than a few dimes, and since it secluded him effectually from the roaring lion of iniquity to which so many men fell victims in the lively little settlement. But 'Tana, knowing that card playing by a girl would not be a thing within Mrs. Huzzard's understanding, glanced warily at the door leading to the second floor of the establishment and comforted herself that the mistress of the domain was yet employed by her toilet for the evening.

'Tana dealt, and did it so deftly that Lyster looked at her in surprise, even irritation. What business had she touching the bits of pasteboard like that--like some old gambler. Such a slight slip of a thing, with all the beauty of early youth in her face, and all the guilelessness of a vestal in the pure white of her garb. He fancied he would have felt different if he had seen her playing cards in that Indian dress; it would not have brought such a discord with it. And it was not merely that she played, but it was the way she played that brought vexation to him--that careless, assured handling of the cards. It seemed almost professional,--it seemed--

"I'll just take that little five," remarked his opponent easily, and spread out the cards before him. "I know what you've got, and it won't touch this flush, and if you play again I'd advise you to gather your wits and not play so wild--that is, if you want to win."

He stared at her in astonishment. It was quite true--while his thoughts had been with her personality and her incongruous occupation, her thoughts had been centered very decidedly on the points of the game. She, at least, had not played "wild." A doubt even came into his mind, as to whether she played honestly.

"I don't think I cared about winning," he answered, "I'd rather have given you the stakes than to have had you play for them that way--yes, 'Tana, double the stakes."

"Oh, would you?" she asked, with saucy indifference. "Well, I ain't asking favors. I guess I can win all I want."

"No doubt you can," he assented, gravely. "But as young ladies do not generally depend on their skill with cards to earn their pocket money, I'm afraid Overton would have a lecture ready for you, if he learned of your skill."

"Let him," she said, recklessly. "I've tried to be good, and tried to be nice, and--and even pretty," she added, touching the dainty sleeve and skirt of her dress, "but what use is it? He just stands off and stares at me, and even speaks sharp as if he's sorry he ever brought me down here. I didn't think he'd be like that. He was nicer in Akkomi's village; and now--"

She hesitated, and, seeing that Lyster's eyes were watching her attentively, she laughed in a careless way, and curled the five-dollar bill around her finger.

"So I might as well be bad, don't you see? and I'm going to be, too. I want this five dollars to gamble with, and for nothing else in the world. I'm going to get square with some one."

"Which means you are going to worry some one else, just because Overton has annoyed you," decided Lyster. "That is a woman's idea of retaliation, I believe. Am I the selected victim?"

"Of course you're not, or I wouldn't have told you. All I wanted of you was to give me a start."

"Exactly; your frankness is not very flattering; but, in spite of it, I'd like to give you a start in a different way--toward a good school, for instance. How would you like that?"

She looked at him for a moment suspiciously, she was so used to raillery from him; then she answered briefly:

"But you are not my guardian, Mr. Max Lyster."

"Then you prefer card playing?"

"No, I don't. I'd like it, but my income can't cover such luxuries, and I have booked myself to play for a time this evening, if I can get the man I want to play with."

"But that is what you must not do," he said, hastily. "With Overton or myself, of course, a game would not do you any special harm; but you simply must not indulge in such pastime with this promiscuous gathering of people--of men."

"But it isn't men--it's only one man I want to play--do you see?"

"I might if I knew who it was; but you don't know any men here but Dan and me."

"Yes, I do, too. I know Captain Alphonso Leek."

"Perhaps, but--" Lyster smiled, and shook his head dubiously.

"But he won't play with me, because he don't like me; that's what you would say, if you were not too polite--isn't it? He doesn't approve of me, and can't understand why I'm on the face of the earth, and especially why Dan should take any responsibility but Captain Leek on his hands. Huh! Can't I see? Of course I do. I heard him call me _'that'_ this morning. And so, I want to play a game of poker with him."

She looked impishly at him from under her brows, and twirled the money.

"Won't you be a messenger of peace and fix the game for me?" she asked, insinuatingly. "You know you promised to do penance."

"Then I forswear all rash promises for the future," he declared.

"But you did promise."

"Well, then, I'll keep my word, since you are such a little Shylock. And if it is only the captain--"

She laughed after he had gone out, and sat there shuffling the cards and building them into various forms. She was thus employed when Overton again passed the window and entered the room ere she could conceal them. He observed her attempt to do so and smiled indulgently.

"Playing with the cards, are you?" he asked, in a careless way. "They are expensive toys sometimes. But I'll teach you 'seven-up' some day; it's an easy game."

"Is it?" she said; but did not look up at him. His indifference to the pretty dress had not yet ceased to annoy her.

"Yes. And see here, 'Tana! I forgot to give you a present I brought you a little while ago. It's a ring a fellow from the upper lake region worried me into buying, as he was dead broke. He bought it from an Indian up near Karlo. Queer for an Indian to have, isn't it?"

"Near Karlo?" she said, and reached out her hand for it.

There was a strange look on her face, a strange choking sound in her throat. He noticed it, and his voice was very kindly as he spoke again.

"You don't like even to hear of that region, do you? You must have been very miserable somewhere up there. But never mind, little girl; we'll try to forget all that. And if the ring fits you, wear it, no matter what country it comes from."

She tried to thank him, but the words would not come easily, and her outstretched hand in which the ring lay was tremulous.

"Oh, that's all right," he said hastily, afraid, no doubt, she was going to cry, as he had seen her do before at kind words. "Never mind about the thanks. If you care to wear it, that's all that's necessary; though a snake ring is not the prettiest of ornaments for a girl. It fits, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it fits," she returned, and slipped it on her finger. "It is very nice," but she shivered as with cold, and her hand shook.

It was curious enough to attract notice anywhere, a silver and a gold snake twined together with their heads meeting, and in the flattened gold head, eyes of garnet gleamed, while the silver head had eyes of emerald. Not a girlish looking ornament, surely.

"I'll wear it," she said, and dropped the hand to her side. "But don't tell the rest where it came from. I may want to tease them."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DANCE.

"Ain't it lovely, Ora?" and 'Tana danced past Ora Harrison, the doctor's pretty daughter, as if her feet had wings to them. And as Ora's bright face smiled an answer, it was clear that the only two young girls in the settlement were enjoying Lyster's party to the full.

For it was a pronounced success. Every "boy" invited was there in as much of festive outfit as circumstances would allow. All the "family" people were there. And the presence of Doctor Harrison--the only "professional" man in the town--and his wife and daughter gave a stamp of select society to the gathering in Mrs. Huzzard's rooms.

Mrs. Huzzard beamed with pleasure at the great success of it all. She would have liked to dance, too, and refused most unwillingly when Lyster tried to persuade her. But a supercilious glance from the captain made her refusal decided. The doubt as to whether ladies in "sussiety" ever did dance after forty years, and one hundred and sixty-three pounds weight, deterred her. Now, if the captain had asked her to dance, she would have been more assured.

But the captain did not; and, after a while, he was not to be seen. He had vanished into the little back sitting room, and she was confident he was engaged in his innocent pastime of a friendly game of cards with the doctor.

"Go and dance with 'Tana, or that nice little girl of the doctor's," she said to Lyster, when he was trying to inveigle her into a quadrille--"that's the sort of partner for you."

"But 'Tana has disappeared mysteriously; and as Miss Ora is 'bespoke,' I can't dance with her unless I want a duel with her partner."

"'Tana disappeared! Well, now, I haven't seen her for two dances," said Mrs. Huzzard, looking around searchingly, "though I never missed her till this minute."

"Beg pardon, ma'am," said a voice at her elbow; "but is it the--the young lady with the white dress you are looking for?"

"Yes, it is," answered Mrs. Huzzard, and turned around to face the speaker, who was an apologetic-looking stranger with drab-colored chin whiskers, and a checkered shirt, and a slight impediment in his speech.

"Well, ma'am, I saw her go into that room there quite a spell ago," and he nodded toward the back sitting room. "She hasn't passed out again, as I've seen."

Then, as Mrs. Huzzard smiled on him in a friendly way, he ventured further:

"She's a very pretty girl, as any one can see. Might I ask her name?"

"Oh, yes! Her name is Rivers--Miss Tana Rivers," said Mrs. Huzzard. "You must be a stranger in the settlement?"

"Yes, ma'am, I am. My name is Harris--Jim Harris. I come down from the diggings with Mr. Overton this morning. He allowed it would be all right for me to step inside, if I wanted to see the dancing."

"To be sure it is," agreed Mrs. Huzzard, heartily. "His friends are our friends, and civil folks are always right welcome."

"Thank, you, ma'am; you're kind, I'm sure. But we ain't just friends, especial. Only I had business in his line, so we picked up acquaintance and come into camp together; and when I saw the pretty girl in white, I did think I'd like to come in a spell. She looks so uncommon like a boy I knew up in the 'big bend' country. Looks enough like him to be a twin; but he wasn't called Rivers. Has--has this young lady any brothers or cousins up there?"

"Well, now, as for cousins, they are far out, and we hain't ever talked about them; but as for brothers or sisters, father or mother, that she hasn't got, for she told me so. Her pa and Mr. Dan Overton they was partners once; and when the pa died he just left his child to the partner's care; and he couldn't have left her to a squarer man."

"That's what report says of him," conceded the stranger, watching her with guarded attention. "Then Mr. Overton's partner hasn't been dead long?"

"Oh, no--not very long; not long enough for the child to get used to talking of it to strangers, I guess; so we don't ask her many questions about it. But it troubles her yet, I know."

"Of course--of course; such a pretty little girl, too."

Then the two fell into quite a pleasant chat, and it was not until he moved away from beside her, to make room for the doctor's wife, that Mrs. Huzzard observed that one arm hung limply beside him, and that one leg dragged a little as he walked. He was a man who bore paralysis with him.

She thought, while he was talking to her, that he looked like a man who had seen trouble. A weary, drawn look was about his eyes. She had seen dissipated men who looked like that; yet this stranger seemed in no ways a man of that sort. He was so quiet and polite; and when she saw the almost useless limbs, she thought she knew then what that look in his face meant.

But there were too many people about for her to study one very particularly, so she lost sight of the stranger, Harris, and did not observe that he had moved near the door of the sitting room, or that the door was open.

But it was; and just inside of it Lyster stood watching, with a certain vexation, a game of cards played there. The doctor had withdrawn, and was looking with amusement at the two players--'Tana and Captain Leek. The captain was getting the worst of it. His scattered whiskers fairly bristled with perplexity and irritation. Several times he displayed bad judgment in drawing and discarding, because of his nervous annoyance, while she seemed surprisingly skillful or lucky, and was not at all disturbed by her opponent's moods. She looked smilingly Straight into his eyes, and when she exhibited the last winning hand, and the captain dashed his hand angrily into the pack, she waited for one civil second and then swept the stakes toward her.

"What! Don't you want to play any more, captain?" she asked, maliciously. "I would really like to have another dance, yet if you want revenge--"

"Go and dance by all means," he said, testily. "When I want another game of poker, I'll let you know, but I must say I do not approve of such pastime for young ladies."

"None of us would, if in your place, captain," laughed the doctor. "And, for my part, I am glad I did not play against her luck."

The captain mumbled something about a difference between luck and skill, while 'Tana swept the money off the table and laughed--not a pleasant laugh, either.

"One--two--three--four!--twenty dollars--that is about a dollar a minute, isn't it?" she asked provokingly. "Well, captain, I guess we are square up to to-night, and if you want to open another account, I'm ready."

She spoke with the dash and recklessness of a boy. Lyster noticed it again, and resented it silently. But when she turned, she read the displeasure in his eyes.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she inquired airily. "Is it time for our dance? You see, the captain wanted some amusement, and, as the doctor was nearly asleep over the cards, I came in and helped them out."

"Beautifully," agreed the doctor.

But Lyster borrowed no cheeriness from their smiles.

"I think it is our dance," Lyster observed. "And if you will come--"

"Certain," she said, with a nod; but at the door she paused. "Won't you keep this money for me?" she asked. "I've no pocket. And just put a five in a locked pocket 'for keeps,' please; I owe it to you."

"To me? You won that five."

"No, I didn't; I cheated you," she whispered. "Keep it, please do."

She pushed the money into his hand. One piece of it fell and rolled to the feet of the stranger, who leaned carelessly against the doorway, but in such a position that he could easily see into the sitting room.

He stooped and picked up the money.

"Yours, miss?" he said, courteously, and she smilingly reached out her hand for it--the hand on which Overton's gift, the strange ring, glittered.

The paralytic stranger barely repressed an exclamation as he noticed it, and from it his eyes went swiftly, questioningly, to the girl's face.

"Yes, it's mine," she said, with a nod of thanks. Then she smiled a little as she saw where his attention was given. "Are you wondering if the snakes you see are the result of odd drinks? Well, they are not; they are of metal and won't hurt you."

"Beg, pardon, miss. Guess I did look at your pretty ring sharp; and it is enough to make a man shake if he's been drinking. But a little drink will do me a long time."

Then Lyster and the girl passed on, the girl smiling at the little exchange of words with the stranger. But Lyster himself was anything but well pleased at the entire affair. He resented the fact that he had found her there gambling, that she had shown such skill, that she had turned to the seedy-looking stranger and exchanged words, as men might do, but as a girl assuredly should not do. All these things disturbed him. Why, he could scarcely have told. Only that morning she had been but a little half-savage child, who amused him by her varying moods and sharp speech. But to-night, in her graceful white gown, she seemed to have grown taller and more womanly and winsome. The glances and homage of the most acceptable youths about revealed to him the fact that she was somewhat more than the strong swimmer or clever canoeist. She was deemed charming by others, in a very different fashion than he had thought of her, and she appeared rather too conscious of the fact. He fancied that she even delighted in letting him see that others showed deference to her, when he had only that day teased her as carelessly as he would have teased a boy into a rage.

Then to stop and jest like that with the insignificant stranger by the door! Mr. Lyster said a bad word in his mind, and decided that the presuming masculinity of the settlement would be allowed few chances for favors the remainder of the evening. He intended to guard her himself--a formidable guard for the purpose, as a man would need a good deal of self-reliance to try for favor if so handsome a personality as Lyster's was an opponent.

But the rather shabby stranger, standing by the inner door, scarcely noticed the noticeable young fellow. All his attention was given to the girl who had spoken to him so frankly. She passed on and did not observe his excessive interest. But his eyes lighted up when he heard her voice speaking to him, and his face flushed with color as he stroked his beard with his well hand and gazed after her.

"So this is where the trail begins, is it?" he whispered to the trembling hand at his lips. "Well, I would have looked for it many another place before commencing with a partner of Mr. Dan Overton--law-and-order man. He must have gulled this whole territory beautifully to have them swear by him as they do. And 'Monte' is his _protge_! Well, Miss--or Mr. Monte--whichever it is--your girl's toggery is more becoming than the outfit I saw you wear last; but though your hair is a little darker, I'd swear to you anywhere--yes, and to the ring, too. Well, I think I'll rest my weary body in this 'burgh' for a few weeks to come. If the devil hasn't helped his own, and cheated me, this partner--Mr. 'Rivers'--is yet alive and in the flesh. If so, there is one place he will drift sooner or later, and that is to this young gambler. And then--then death will be no sham for him, for I will be here, too."

To 'Tana--jubilant with her victory over her instinctive antagonist, the captain--all the evening was made for her pleasure, and she floated in the paradise of sixteen years; and the world where people danced was the only world worth knowing.

"I will be good now--I can be as good as an angel since I've got even with the captain."

She whispered those words to Lyster, whose hand was clasping hers, whose arm was about her waist, as they, drifted around the rather small circle, to a waltz played on a concertina and a banjo.

She looked up at him, mutely asking him to believe her. Her desire for revenge satisfied, she could be a very good girl now.

It was just then that Overton, who stood outside the window, glanced in and saw her lovely upturned face--saw the red lips move in some pouting protest, to which Lyster smiled but looked doubtfully down at her. To the man watching them from without, the two seemed always so close--so confidential. At times he even wondered if Lyster had not learned more than himself of her life before that day at Akkomi's camp.

All that evening Dan had not once entered the room where they danced, or added in any way to their merry-making. He had stood outside the door most of the time, or sometimes rested a little way from it on a store box, where he smoked placidly, and inspected the people who gathered to the dance.

All the invited guests came early, and perfect harmony reigned within. A few of the unsavory order of citizens had sauntered by, as though taking note of the pleasures from which they were excluded. But it was not until almost twelve o'clock--just after Overton had turned away from watching the waltz--that a pistol shot rang out in the street, and several dancers halted.

Some of the men silently moved to the door, but just then the door was opened by Overton, who looked in.

"It was only my gun went off by accident," he said, carelessly. "So don't let me stampede the party. Go on with your music."

The stranger, Harris, was nearest the door, and essayed to pass out, but Overton touched him on the arm.

"Not just yet," he said hurriedly. "Don't come out or others will follow, and there'll be trouble. Keep them in some way."

Then the door closed. The concertina sobbed and shrieked out its notes, and drowned a murmur of voices on the outside. One man lay senseless close to the doorstep, and four more men with two women stood a little apart from him.

"If another shot is fired, your houses will be torn down over your heads to-morrow," said Overton, threateningly; "and some of you will not be needing an earthly habitation by that time, either."

"Fury! It is Overton!" muttered one of the men to another. "They told us he wasn't in this thing."

"What for you care?" demanded the angry tones of a Dutch woman. "What difference that make--eh? If so be as we want to dance--well, then, we go in and dance--you make no mistake."

But the men were not so aggressive. The most audacious was the senseless one, who had fired the revolver and whom Overton had promptly and quietly knocked down.

"I don't think you men want any trouble of this sort," he remarked, and ignored the women entirely. "If you've been told that I'm not in this, that's just where some one told you a lie; and if it's a woman, you should know better than to follow her lead. If these women get through that door, it will be when I'm an angel. I'm doing you all a good turn by not letting the boys in there know about this. No religion could save you, if I turned them loose on you; so you had better get away quiet, and quick."

The men seemed to appreciate his words.

"That's so," mumbled one.

And as the other woman attempted a protest, one of the men put his hand over her mouth, and, picking her up bodily, walked down the street with her, she all the time kicking and making remarks of a vigorous nature.

The humor of the situation appealed to the delicate senses of her companions, until they laughed right heartily, and the entire tone of the scene was changed from a threat of battle to an excuse for jollity. The man on the ground reeled upward to his feet with the help of a shake from Overton.

"Where's my gun?" he asked, sulkily.

Blood trickling from a cut brow compelled him to keep one eye shut.

"Overton has it," explained one of his friends. "Come on, and don't try another racket."

"I want my gun--it was him hit me," growled the wounded one, whose spirits had not been enlivened by the spectacle the rest had witnessed.

"You are right--it was him," agreed the other, darkly; "and if it hadn't been for breaking up the dance, I guess he'd a-killed you. Come on. You left a ball in his arm by the looks of things, and all he did was to knock you still. He may want to do more to-morrow. But as you have no gun, you'd better wait till then."

The door had been opened, and the light streamed out. Men talked in a friendly, jovial fashion on and about the doorstep. They saw the forms moving away in the shadows, but no sign of disturbance met them.

Overton stood looking in the window at the dancers. The waltz was not yet finished, and 'Tana and Lyster drifted past within a few feet of him. The serenity of their evening had not been disturbed. Her face held all of joyous content--so it seemed to the watcher. She laughed as she danced; and hearing the music of her high, girlish tones, he forgot for a time the stinging little pain in his arm, until his left hand, thrust into his coat pocket, slowly filled with blood. Then Dan turned to the man nearest him.

"If Doctor Harrison is still in there, would you do me the favor of asking him to come outside for a few minutes?" he asked, and the man addressed stepped closer.

"There is a back way into the house. Hadn't you better just step in that way, and have him fix you up? He's in the back room, alone, smoking."

Overton turned with an impatient exclamation, and a sharp, questioning look. It was the half-paralyzed stranger--Harris.

"Oh, I ain't interfering!" he said, amiably. "But as I slipped out through the back door before your visitors left, I dropped to the fact that you had some damage done to that left arm. Yes, I'll carry any message you like to your doctor, for I like your nerve. But I must say it's thankless work to stand up as a silent target for cold lead, just so some one else may dance undisturbed. Take an old man's advice, sonny, do some of the dancing yourself."

CHAPTER IX.

THE STRANGER'S WARNING.

That one festive night decided the immediate future of 'Tana. All her joy in it did not prevent a decision that it should be the last in her experience, for a year to come, at least.

It was Lyster who broached the subject, and Overton looked at him closely while he talked.

"You are right," he decided, at last; "a school is the easiest path out of this jungle, I reckon. I thought of a school, but didn't know where--I'm not posted on such things. But if you know the trail to a good one, we'll fix it. She has no family folks at all, so--"

"I'd like to ask, if it's allowable--"

"Don't ask me about her people," said the other, quickly; "she wouldn't want me to talk of them. You see, Max, all sorts get caught in whirlpools of one sort or another, when ventures are made in a new country like this, and often it's a thoroughbred that goes under first, while a lot of scrub stock will pull through an epidemic and never miss a feed. Well, her folks belonged to the list that has gone under--speculating people, you know, who left her stranded when they started 'over the range,' and she's sensitive about it--has a sort of pride, too, and doesn't want to be pitied, I guess. Anyway, I've promised she sha'n't be followed by any reminder of her misfortunes, and I can't go into details."

"Oh, that's all right; I'm not curious to know whether her folks had a palace or a cabin to live in. But she has brightness. I like her well enough to give up some useless pastimes that are expensive, and contribute the results to a school fund for her, if you say yes. But I should like to know if her people belonged to the class we call ladies and gentlemen--that is all."

Overton did not answer at once. His eyes were turned toward his bandaged arm, and a little wrinkle grew between his brows.

"The man is dead, and I don't think there's anything for me to say as to his gentlemanly qualities," he said at last. "He was a prospector and speculator, with an equal amount of vice and virtue in him, I suppose; just about like the rest of us. Her mother I never saw, but have reason to think she was a lady."

"And you say every word of that as if they were drawn from you with forceps," said Lyster, cheerily. "Well, I'll not bother you about it again. But, you see, there is a cousin of mine at the school I spoke of, and I wanted to know because of that. It's all right, though; my own instincts would tell me she came of good stock. But even good stock will grow wild, you know, if it doesn't get the right sort of training. You know, old fellow, I'm downright in earnest about wanting to help you about her."

"Yes, I know. You have, too," said the other. "You've pointed out the school and all, and we see she can't be left here."

"Not when you are ranging around the hills, and never a man to take your place as a guard," agreed Lyster. "I feel about two years old ever since I heard of how you kept annoyances from us last night while we were so serenely unconscious of your trials. 'Tana will scarcely look at me this morning, for no reason but that I did not divine the state of affairs and go to help you. That girl has picked up so much queer knowledge herself that she expects every one to be gifted with second sight."

Then he told, with a good deal of amusement, the episode of the poker game and the discomfiture of the captain.

Overton said little. He was not so much shocked or vexed over it as Lyster had been, because he had lived more among people to whom such pastimes were not unusual.

"And I offered to teach her 'seven-up,' because it was easy," he remarked grimly. "Yes, the school is best. You see, even if I am on the ground, I'm not a fit guardian. Didn't I give her leave to get square with the old man? While, if I'd been the right sort of a guardian, she would have been given a moral lecture on the sinfulness of revenge. I guess we'd better begin to talk school right away."

"I imagine she'll object at first, through force of habit, and protest that she knows enough for one girl."

But she did not. She listened with wonder in her eyes, and something of shamed contrition in her face, and knew so well--so very well that she did not deserve it. She had wanted--really wanted to vex him when she played the cards, when she had danced past, and never let on she saw him looking somberly in at the window the night before. But in the light of morning and with the knowledge of his wounded arm, all her resentment was gone. She could scarcely speak even the words she meant to say.

"I can't do that--go, I mean. It will cost so much, and I have no money. I can't make any here, and--and you are not rich enough to lend it to me, even if I could pay it back some day, so--"

"Never mind about the money; it will be got. I'm to start up north of this soon, and this doesn't seem a good place to school you in, anyway. So, for a year or so, you go to that school down in Helena. Max knows the name of it; I forget. When you get all rigged out with an education, and have a capital of knowledge, you can talk then about the money and paying it, if it makes you feel more comfortable. But just now you be a good little girl; go down there with Max to the school, study hard, so that if I drop into a chasm some night, or am picked off by a bullet, you'll have learned, anyway, how to look after yourself in the right way."

"Oh, it's Mr. Max, then, that's planning this, is it?" she asked suddenly, and her face flushed a little--he must have thought in anger, for he said:

"Why--yes; that is--mostly. You see, 'Tana, I've drifted out from the ways of the world while Max has kept up with them. So he proposed--well, no matter about the plan. I'm to suggest it to you, and as it's no loss and all gain to you, I reckon you'll be sensible enough to say yes."

"I will," she answered, quietly; "it is very kind of you both to be so good to me, for I haven't been good to you--to either of you, I'm sorry--I--maybe I'll be better when I come back--and--maybe I can pay you some day."

"Me? Oh, you won't owe me anything, and I reckon you'd better not make plans about coming back here! The books and things you learn will likely turn you toward other places--finer places. This is all right for men who have money to make; but you--"

"I'm coming back here," she said, nodding her head emphatically. "Maybe not for always--but I'll come back some time--I will."

She was twisting her fingers in a nervous way, and, as he watched her, he noticed that her little brown hands were devoid of all ornament.

"Where is the ring?" he asked. "Have you lost it already?"

"No, it's here--in my pocket," and she drew it out that he might see. "I--I took it off this morning when I saw you were shot. You'll laugh, I suppose; but I thought the snakes brought bad luck."

"So you are superstitious?"

"Oh, I don't know! I'm not afraid very often; but sometimes I think there are signs that are true. I've heard old folks say so, and talk of things unlucky. I took the ring off when I saw your arm."

"But the arm was only scratched--not worth a thought from a little girl like you," he said; "and surely not worth throwing off your jewelry for. But some day--some day of good luck, I may find you a prettier ring--one more like a girl's ring, you know; one you can wear and not be afraid."

"If I'm afraid, it isn't for myself," she said, with that old, unchildlike look he had not seen in her eyes of late. "But I'll tell you what I'm afraid of. Have you ever heard of people who were 'hoodoos'? I guess you have. Well, sometimes I'm afraid I'm just that--like the snakes in that ring. I'm afraid I bring bad luck to people--people I like. It isn't the harm to me that ever frightens me. I guess I can fight that; but no one can fight a 'hoodoo,' I guess; and your arm--"

"Oh, see here! Wake up, 'Tana, you're dreaming! Who put that cussed nonsense into your head? 'Hoodoo!' Pshaw! I will have patience with you in anything but that. Did any one look at you last night as if you were a 'hoodoo'? Here comes Max; we'll ask him."

But she did not smile at their badinage.

"I was in earnest, and you think it only funny," she said. "Well, maybe you won't always laugh at it. Men who know a heap believe in 'hoodoos.'"

"But not 'hoodoos' possessed of the _tout ensemble_ of Miss Rivers," objected Lyster. "You are simply trying to scare us--me, out of the journey I hoped to make with you to Helena. You are trying to evade a year of scholastic training we have planned for you, and you would like to prophesy that the boat will blow up or the cars run off the track if you embark. But it won't. You will say good-by to your ogre of a guardian to-morrow. You will be guarded by no less a personage than my immaculate self to the door of your academy; from which you will emerge, later on, with never a memory of 'hoodoos' in your wise brain; and you will live to a green old age and make clay busts of us both when we are gray haired. There! I think I'm a good healthy sort of a prophet; and as a reward will you go with me to-morrow?"

"With you? Then it is you who--"

"Who has planned the whole brilliant scheme? Exactly--the journey part of it at all events; and I'm not so modest as our friend here. I'll take the blame of my share, and his, too, if he doesn't speak up for himself. Here comes your new friend, Dan. Where did you pick him up?"

It was the man Harris, and beside him was the captain. They were talking with some animation of late Indian raids to the westward.

"I doubt if it was Indians at all who did the thieving," remarked Harris; "there are always a lot of scrub whites ready to take advantage of war signals, and do devilment of that sort, made up as reds."

"Oh, yes--some say so! That man Holly used to get the credit of that sort of renegade work. Handsome Holly he was called once. But now that he's dead, maybe we'll see he was not the only one to work mischief between the whites and reds."

"Holly? Lee Holly?" asked Lyster. "Why, didn't we hear a rumor that he wasn't dead at all, but had been seen somewhere near Butte?"

"I didn't," returned Overton, who was the one addressed, "though it may be so. He's a very slippery specimen and full of schemes, from what I hear. But he doesn't seem to range over this territory, so I've never run across him. It would be like him, though, to play dead when the Government men grew warm on his trail, and he'd no doubt get plenty of help from his Indian allies."

Harris was watching him keenly, and the careless honesty of the speaker's face and tone evidently perplexed him, for he turned with a baffled look to the girl, who stood with down-dropped eyes, and twisted a spray of leaves nervously around her fingers. He noticed one quick, troubled glance she gave Overton, but even to his suspicious eyes it did not seem a regard given a fellow-conspirator.

"I believe it was the doctor I heard speak of the rumor that Holly was yet above ground," said Lyster. "The mail came up yesterday, and perhaps he found it in the papers. Don't think I had heard of the man before. Is he one of the important people up here?"

"Rather," remarked Overton, "an accomplished crook who has dabbled in several trades in the Columbia River region. The latest was a wholesale horse steal from a ranch over in Washington--Indian work, with him as leader. The regulars from the fort got after them, there was an ugly fight, and the reds reported Holly as killed. That is the last I heard of him. You were asking me yesterday if he ever prospected in our valley, didn't you?" he asked, turning to Harris.

"A man made undue importance of by the stupid Indians," declared Captain Leek. "He humored their superstitions and played medicine man with them, I've heard; and he had a boy for a partner--a young slip the gamblers called 'Monte' down in Coeur d'Alene. Some said it was his son."

"A fine instructor for youth," observed Lyster. "Who could expect anything but vice from a man who had such a boyhood?"

"But you would," said 'Tana, suddenly, "if you knew that boy when he grew to be a man. If he was bad, you'd want him to get off the earth where you walked; and you never once would stop to ask if he was brought up right or not--you know you wouldn't--nobody does, I guess. I don't know why it is, but it seems all wrong to me. Maybe, though, when I go to school, and learn things, I will think like the rest, and not care."

Lyster shrugged his shoulders and looked after her as she vanished into the regions where Mrs. Huzzard was concocting dishes for the mid-day meal.

"I doubt if she thinks like the rest," he remarked. "How fiery she is, and how independent in her views of things."

But Overton smiled at her curt speech.

"Poor 'Tana has lived among rough scenes until she learns to judge quickly, and for herself," he said. "Her words are true enough, too; she may have known just such boys as Holly's clever little partner and seen how hard it was for them to be any good. I wonder now what has become of young 'Monte' since Holly disappeared. He would be a good one to follow, if there is doubt as to Holly's death being a fact. I believe there was a reward out for him some time ago, to stimulate lagging justice. Don't know if it's withdrawn or not."

"Square," decided Harris, in silent communion with himself, as he surveyed Overton; "dead square, and don't scent the trail. I'd like to know what their little game is with him. Some devilment, sure."

On one pretext and another he kept close to Overton. He was studying the stalwart, easy-going keeper of the peace, and Dan, who had a sort of compassion for all who were halt, or blind, or homeless, took kindly enough to the semi-paralyzed stranger. Harris seemed to belong nowhere in particular, yet knew each trail of the Kootenai and Columbia country, knew each drift where the yellow sands were found--each mine where the silver hunt paid best returns.

"You've prospected some, I see, even if you don't get over the ground very fast," Dan remarked; "and with it all, I reckon you've staked out some pay claims for yourself?"

The face of Harris contracted in a swift frown; he drew a long breath, and his clasped hands tightened on each other.

"I did," he said, in a choked, nervous sort of way; "I did. If I could tell you of it, I would. You're the sort of man I'd--But never mind. I'm not well yet--not strong enough to get excited over it. I've got to take things easy for a spell, or another stroke of this paralysis will come as my share. That handicaps me considerable. I was--was upset by something unexpected last night, and I've had a queer, shaky feeling ever since; can't articulate clear. Did you notice? The--the only thing under God's heaven I'm afraid of is that paralysis--that it will catch me again before I get my work done; and to-day--"

"Don't talk of it," advised Overton, as he noticed how the man's voice hesitated and trembled, how excitable he was over the subject of his mineral finds and his threatened helplessness. "Don't think of it, and you'll come out all right yet. If I can do anything for you--"

The other man laughed in a spasmodic, contemptuous fashion.

"For me?" he said. "You can't. I thought you could, but I was on a blind trail--you can't. I can give you a lift, though--yes, I can. It's about--about that girl. You--you tried to guard her last night, as if she was a flower the rough wind must not blow on. I know--I watched you. I've been there, and know."

"Know what? You're an infernal fool!" burst out Dan, with all his good nature out of sight. "No hints about the girl, or--or anything else! I won't have it!"

"It's no hint; facts are all I'd mention to you, and I'd do that just because I think you're square. And they--they are playing you. See? For he ain't dead. I don't know what their game is with you, but he ain't dead; and there--there's no telling what scheme he's got her into this--this territory for. So I want you to know. I don't want you to be caught in any trap of theirs. She--she looks all right; but he's a devil--a thing infernal--a--"

Overton caught him by one arm, and swung him around like a child.

"Speak clear. No more of your blasted stuttering or beating away from points; who is the man you talk of? Who is playing with me? Now speak."

"Why, Monte, the girl; Monte and Lee Holly. He's somewhere alive--that's what I'm trying to tell you. I was hunting for him when I found her laying low here, don't you understand? You stare so. It is Lee Holly and-- Ah--my--God!"

The last words were gurgled in his throat; his face whitened, and he sank to the ground as though his bones had suddenly been converted into jelly--a strange, shapeless heap of humanity as he lay at Overton's feet. Overton bent over him, and after a moment of blank amaze, lifted the helpless head, and almost dropped it again, when the eyes, appealing and keenly conscious, met his own. There was a queer chuckling sound in the man's throat; he was trying to speak, but could not. The secret he was trying to tell was buried back of those speechless lips, and one more stroke of the doom he feared had overtaken him.

CHAPTER X.

THE STRANGER'S LOVE STORY.

'Tana sat alone in her room a few hours later, and from the window watched the form of Ora Harrison disappear along the street. The latter had been sent by her father with some medicine for the paralyzed stranger, and the girls had chatted of the school 'Tana was to attend, and of the schools Ora had gone to and all the friends she remembered there, who now sent her such kind letters. Ora told 'Tana of the lovely time she expected to have when the steamers would come up from Bonner's Ferry to the Kootenai Lake region, for then her friends were to come in the summers, and the warm months were to be like holidays.

All this girlish frankness, all the cheery friendship of the doctor's family filled 'Tana with a wild unrest against herself--against the world.

"It would be easy to be good if a person lived like that always," she thought, "in a nice home, with a mother to kiss me and a father I was not ashamed of. I felt stupid when they talked to me. I could only think how happy they were, and that they did not seem to know it. And Ora was sweet and sorry for me because my parents were dead. Huh!" she grunted, disdainfully, in the Indian fashion peculiar to her at times. "If she knew how I felt about it she'd hate me, I suppose. They'd all think I was bad clear through. They wouldn't understand the reason--no nice women like them could. Oh, if the school would only make me nice like that! But I suppose it's got to be born in people, and I was born different."

Even this reason did not render her more resigned; and, to add to her disquiet, there came to her the memory of eyes whose gaze made her shiver--the eyes of the stranger whom Overton had carried into the house for dead, but whose brain was yet alive. He had looked at her with a strange, wild stare, and Overton himself had turned his eyes toward her in moody questioning when she came forward to help. He had accepted the help, but each time she raised her eyes she saw that Dan was looking at her with a new watchfulness; all his interest in the stricken stranger did not keep him from that.

"If any one is accountable for this, I guess I'm the man," he confessed, ruefully. "He told me he was afraid of this, yet I was fool enough to lose my temper and turn him around rough. It might have struck him, anyway; but my conscience doesn't let me down easy. He'll be my care till some one comes along with a stronger claim."

"Maybe there is some one somewhere," said 'Tana. "There might be letters, if it would be right to look."

"If there are relatives anywhere in the settlements, I guess they'd be glad enough if I'd look," decided Overton. "There is no way to get permission from him, though," and he looked in the helpless man's eyes. "I don't know what you'd say to this if you could speak, stranger," he said; "but to go through your pockets seems the only way to locate you or your friends; so I'll have to do it."

It was not easy to do, with those eyes staring at him in that horrible way. But he tried to avoid the eyes, and thrust his hand into the inner pocket, drawing out an ordinary notebook, some scraps of newspaper folded up in it, and two letters addressed to Joe Hammond; one to Little Dalles, and the other had evidently been delivered by a messenger, for no destination was marked on it. It was an old letter and the envelope was worn through all around the edges. Another paper was wrapped around it, and the writing was of a light feminine character. Overton touched it with a certain reverence and looked embarrassed.

"I think, Mrs. Huzzard, I will ask you to read this, as it seems a lady's letter, and if there is any information in it, you can give it to us; if not, I'll just put it back in his pocket and hope luck will tell us what the letter doesn't."

But Mrs. Huzzard demurred: "And me that short-sighted that even specs won't cure it! No, indeed. I'm no one to read important papers. But here's 'Tana, with eyes like a hawk for sighting things. She'll read it fast enough."

Overton looked undecided, remembering those strange insinuations of the now helpless man, and feeling that the man himself might not be willing.

"I--well--I guess not," he said, at last. "It ain't just square to send a little girl blindfold like that into a stranger's claim. We'll let some one over twenty-one read the letters. You'll do, Max, and if it ain't all right, you can stop up short."

So Lyster read the treasured message, all in the same feminine writing. His sensitive face grew grave, and he turned compassionate glances toward the helpless man as he read the letters, according to their dates. The oldest one was the only one not sad. Its postmark was a little town many miles to the south.

"DEAR OLD JOE: It's awful to be this near you, and know you are sick, without being able to get to you. I just arrived, and your partner has met me, and told me all about it. But I'll go up with him, just the same; and when you are able to travel we can come down to a town and be married, instead of to-day, as we had set on. So that's all right, and don't you worry. Your partner, John Ingalls, is as nice as he can be to me. Why did you not tell me how good looking he was? Maybe you never discovered it--you slow, prosy old Joe! When you wrote to me of that rich find you stumbled on, I was sorry you had picked up a partner; for you always did trust folks too much, and I was afraid you'd be cheated by the stranger you picked up. But I guess that I was wrong, Joe; for he is a very nice gentleman--the nicest I ever met, I think. And he talks about you just as if he was your brother, and thought a heap of you. He tried to tease me some, too--asked how you ever came to catch such a pretty girl as me! Then I told him, Joe, that you never had to catch me--that I was little, and hadn't any folks, and how you got your folks to give me a home when you was only a boy; and that you was always like a big brother to me till you made some money in the mines. Then you wrote and asked me to come out and marry you. He just laughed, Joe, and said it was not a brother's love that a wife wanted; but I don't think he knows anything about that--do you? And, Joe, I came pretty near telling him all about that richest find you made--the one you said you wanted me to be the first to see. I thought, of course, you had told your partner, just as you told me when you sent me the plan of it--what for, I don't know, Joe, for I never could find it in the wide world, even if there was any chance of my hunting for it alone. Your partner asked me point blank if you had written to me of any late find of yours, or of any special location where you found good signs. I tried to look innocent, and said maybe you had, but I couldn't remember. I didn't like to tell a story. I wanted to tell him all the truth, and how rich you said we would be. I knew you would want to tell him yourself, so I managed to keep quiet in time. But whenever he looks at me I feel guilty. And he looks at me so kindly, and he is so good. He says we can't begin our journey to you right away, because he has provisions and things to get first; but we will set out in three days. So I send this letter that you will know I am on the road; maybe we'll reach you first. He is going to take me riding around this camp this evening--I mean Mr. Ingalls. He says I must get some enjoyment before I go up there to the mountains, where no one lives. He is the nicest stranger I ever met. But, of course, I never was away from home much to meet folks; I guess, though, I might travel a long ways and not meet any one so nice. He just brought me a pretty purse made by the Indians. I hope you wear a big hat like he does, and big, high boots. I never saw folks wear them back home; but they do look nice. Now, good-by, Joe, for a few days.

"Yours affectionately, "FANNIE."

"Well, that letter is plain sailing," remarked Overton, "but there is only one name in it we could follow up--the partner, John Ingalls. But I don't think I've heard of him."

"Wait! there is another letter--two more," said Lyster; and the others were silent as he read:

"JOE: I hope you'll hate me now. I can stand that better than to know you still like me. I can't help it. I am going with him--your partner. He loves me, too, Joe--not in the brotherly way you did, but in a way that makes me think of him and no one else. So I can't marry any one but him. Maybe it's a sin to be false to you, Joe; but I never could go to you now. And I can't help going where he wants me to go. Don't be mad at him; he can't help it either, I suppose. He says he will always be good to me, and I am going. But my heart is heavy as I write to you. I am not happy--maybe because I love him too much. But I am going. Try and forget me.

"FANNIE."

In dead silence Lyster unfolded the third paper. The drama of this stranger's life was a pathetic thing to the listeners, who looked at him with pity in their eyes, but could utter no words of sympathy to the man who sat there helpless and looked at them. Then the last, a penciled sheet, was read.

"JOE: I am dying, I think. The Indian woman with me says so; and I hope it is true. He came to me to-day--the first time in weeks. He never married me, as he promised. He cursed me to-day because my baby face led him away from a fortune he knows you found. I never told him, though it is a wonder. All he knows of it he heard you say in your sleep when you were sick that time. To-day he told me you were paralyzed, Joe--that you are helpless still--that he has taken Indians with him there to your old claim, and searched every foot of ground for the gold vein he thinks you know of. But it is of no use, and he is furious over it, and so taunts me of your helplessness alone in the wilderness.

"Joe, I still have the plan you made of the river and the two little streams and the marked tree. Can't I make amends some way for the wrong I did you? Is there anywhere a friend you could trust to work the find and take care of you? For if you are too helpless to write yourself, and can get only the name of the person to me, I will send the plan some way to him. I know I am not to live long. I am in a perfect fever to hear from you, and tell you that my sin against you weighs me down to despair.

"I can't tell you of my life with him; it is too horrible. I do not even know who he is, for Ingalls is not his name. We are with Indians and they call him 'Medicine,' and seem to know him well. He has left me here, to-day, and I feel I will never see him again. He tells me he has sent for a young white boy who is to be brought to camp, and who will help care for me. Anything would be better than the sly red faces about me; they fill me with terror. My one hope is that the boy may get this letter sent to you, and that some word may come to me from you before my life ends. It has taken me all this day to write to you.

"Good-by. I am dying miserably, and I deserve it. I can't even tell you where to write me; only we are with Indians camped by a big river. Not far away is a wall of rock, like a hill, beside the river, and Indian writing is cut on the wall, and holes and things are cut all along it."

"The Arrow lakes of the Columbia!" interrupted Overton--

"If the boy comes, and is to be trusted at all, he may tell me more; that is my only hope of this reaching you. If you are not able to make another plan (and he says your hands are powerless) remember, I have the one you did make. If you can send me one word--one name of a friend--I will try--try so hard. He would kill me if he knew, and I would be glad of it, if I could only help you first. I feel that I will never see you again.

"FANNIE."

Mrs. Huzzard was crying and whispering, "Poor dear!--poor child!" and even the voice of Lyster was not quite steady as he read. Those straggling, weak pencil marks had a pathos of their own to him. The letter, crossed and recrossed by the lines, was on two pages, evidently torn from the back of a book.

"It seems a sacrilege to dive into a man's feelings and secrets like this," he said, ruefully. "It _is_! My only consolation is that I did it with good intent."

"And, after all, not a plain trail found that will help us locate this man or his friends," decided Overton--"not a name we can really fasten to but the name on the envelope--Joe Hammond. It is too bad. Why, 'Tana! Good God! _'Tana!_"

For the girl, who had uttered no word, but had listened to that last letter with whitened face and staring eyes, leaned against the wall at its close, and a little gasp from her drew their attention.

She fell forward on her face ere Overton could reach her.

"Tana, my girl, what is it? Speak!" he entreated.

But the girl only whispered: "I know now! Joe--Joe Hammond!" and fainted dead away at the feet of the paralyzed man.

CHAPTER XI.

'Tana AND JOE.

"Just like a part in a play, captain--that's just the way it struck me," said Mrs. Huzzard, recounting the affair for the benefit of the postmaster of Sinna Ferry. "The man a-sitting there like a statue, with only his eyes looking alive, and that poor, scared dear a-falling down on the floor beside him, and looking as white as milk! I never had a notion she was so easy touched by people's troubles. It surely was a sorry story read from them three letters. I tell you, sir, men leave women with aching hearts many's the time," and she glanced sentimentally toward her listener; "though if there is one place more heart-rending to be deserted in than another, I think an Indian village would be the very worst. Just to think of that poor dear dying there in a place she didn't even know the name of."

"Humph! I've an idea you are giving your sympathy to the wrong individual," decided the captain. "It must be easier even to die in some unknown corner than for a living soul to be shut up in a dead body, after the manner of this Harris, or Hammond, or whatever his name is. I guess, from the looks of things, he must have collapsed when that second letter reached him; had a bad stroke, and was just recovering somewhat when he strayed into this camp. Yes, madame, I've an idea he's had a harder row to hoe than the girl; and, then, it doesn't look as though he'd deserved it so much."

"Mr. Dan is mightily upset over it, ain't he?"

"Mr. Dan is just as likely to get upset over any other vagabond who strays in his direction," grumbled the captain. "Folks are always falling in his way to be looked after. He has the worst luck! He never did a bit of harm to this stranger--nothing but drop a hand on his shoulder; and all at once the man falls down helpless. And Dan feels in duty bound to take care of him. Then the girl 'Tana has to flop over in the same way, just when I thought we were to get rid of her. And she's another charge to look after. He'll be wanting to hire your house for a hospital next thing, Mrs. Huzzard."

"And welcome he'd be to it for 'Tana," declared Mrs. Huzzard, valiantly. "She's been a bit saucy to you at times, and I know it; but, indeed, it's only because she fancies you don't like her."

"Like her, madame! A girl who plays poker, and--and--"

"And wins," added Mrs. Huzzard, with a twinkle in her eyes. "Ah, now, didn't Mr. Max tell me the whole story! She is a clip, and I know it; but I think she only meant that game as a bit of a joke."

"A twenty-dollar joke, Mrs. Huzzard, is too expensive to be funny," growled the captain, with natural discontent. "But if I could only convince myself that the money was honestly won, I would not feel so annoyed over it; but I can't--no, madame. I am confident there was a trick in that game--some gambler's trick she has picked up among her promiscuous acquaintances. And I am annoyed--more than ever annoyed now that there is a chance of her remaining longer under Dan's care. She's a dangerous _protge_ for a boy of his age, that's all."

"Dangerous! Oh, now, I've my doubts of that," said Mrs. Huzzard, shaking her head, emphatically. "You take my word for it, if she's dangerous as a girl to any one in this camp, it's not Mr. Dan's peace of mind she's disturbing, but that of his new friend."

"You mean Lyster? Ridiculous! A gentleman of culture, used to the best society, give a thought to such an unclassed individual? No, madame!--don't you believe it. His interest about the school affair was doubtless to get her away from camp, and to keep her from being a responsibility on Dan's hands."

"Hum! maybe. But, from all the dances he danced with her, and the way he waited on her, I'd a notion that he did not think her a great responsibility at all."

This conversation occurred the morning after those letters had been read. The owner of them was installed in the best room Mrs. Huzzard had to offer, and miners from all sections were cordially invited to visit the paralyzed man, in the vain hope that some one would chance to remember his face, or help establish the lost miner's identity; for he seemed utterly lost from all record of his past--all but that he had loved a girl whom an unknown partner had stolen. And Overton remembered that he seemed especially interested in the whereabouts of the renegade, Lee Holly.

The unknown Lee Holly's name had suddenly attained the importance of a gruesome ghost to Overton. He had stared gloomily at the paralytic, as though striving to glean from the living eyes the secrets held close by the silenced lips. 'Tana and Monte and Lee Holly!--his little girl and those renegades! Surely these persons could have nothing to do with each other. Harris was looney--so Overton decided as he stalked back and forth beside the house, glancing up once in a while to a window above him--a window where he hoped to see 'Tana's face; for all one day had gone, and the evening come again, yet he had never seen her since he had lifted her unconscious form from beside the chair of Harris. Her words, "I know now! Joe--Joe Hammond!" were yet whispering through his senses. Did those words mean anything? or was the child simply overwrought by that tragedy told in the letters? He did not imagine she would comprehend all the sadness of it until she had fallen in that faint.

The night he had talked with her first in Akkomi's tepee, and afterward in the morning by the river, he had promised to be satisfied with what she chose to tell him of herself, and ask no questions of her past. But since the insinuations of Harris and her own peculiar words and manner, he discovered that the promise was not easy to keep--especially when Lyster besieged him with questions; for 'Tana had spent the day utterly alone, but for the ministrations of Mrs. Huzzard. She would not see even the doctor, as she said she was not sick. She would not see Overton, Lyster, or any one else, because she said she did not want to talk; she was tired, and that reason must suffice. It did for Lyster, especially after he had received a nod, a smile, and a wave of her hand from her window--a circumstance he related hopefully to Overton, as it banished the lingering fear in his mind that her exile was one caused by absolute illness.

"I candidly believe, Dan, that she is simply ashamed of having fainted before us last evening--fancies it looks weak, I suppose; and she does pride herself so on her ungirlish strength. I've no doubt she will emerge from her seclusion to-morrow morning, and expect us to ignore her sentimental swoon. How is your other patient?"

"Better."

"Much?"

"Well, just the difference of turning his eyes quickly toward a thing, instead of slowly, as at first. The doctor just told me he is able to move his head slightly, so I guess he is not to go under this trip. But he'll never be a well man again."

"Rather heavy on you, old fellow, that you feel bound to look after him. I can't see the necessity of it. Why don't you let the rest of the camp--"

But Overton had turned away and resumed his walk. Lyster stared at him in wonder for a moment and then laughed.

"All right, Rothschild," he observed. "You know the depth of your own purse best. But, to tell the truth, you don't act like your own responsible self to-day. You go moping around as though the other fellow's stroke had touched you, too. You are a great fellow, Dan, to take other people's loads on your shoulders; but it is a bad habit, and you'd better reform."

"I will, when I have time," returned Overton, with a grim smile. "Just now I have other things to think of. Don't mind me."

"I sha'n't. I confess I don't mind any of you very much since I saw the cheery vision of your _protge_ at the window--and waving her hand to me, too; the first bit of sunshine I've seen in camp to-day. For the average specimen I've run across has looked to me like you--glum."

Receiving no reply whatever to this criticism, he strolled away after a smiling glance upward to 'Tana's window. But no girlish hand waved greeting to him this time, and he comforted himself by humming, "My Love is but a Lassie Yet." This was a mischievous endeavor to attract Overton's attention and make him say something, even though the something should prove uncomplimentary to the warbler.

But it was a failure. Overton only thrust his hands a little deeper in his pockets as he stared after the handsome, light-hearted fellow. Of course, it would be Max to whom she would wave her hand; and he was glad somebody felt like singing, though he himself could not. His mind was too much tormented by the thoughts of those two who formed a nucleus for the hospital already contemptuously alluded to by the captain.

And those two?

One sat almost motionless, as he had been for the twenty-four hours. But as Mrs. Huzzard and the captain left his room, each spoke hopefully of his appearance. Mrs. Huzzard especially was very confident his face showed more animation than she had observed at her noonday visit; and the fact that he could move his head and nod in reply to questions certainly did seem to promise recovery.

In the adjoining room, close to the very thin partition, 'Tana lay with ears strained to catch each word of the conversation. But when her door was opened by Mrs. Huzzard, all semblance of interest was gone, and she lay on the little bed with closed eyes.

"I'm right glad she's taking a nap at last," said the good soul as she closed the door softly. "That child scarce slept a bit all night, and I know it. Curious how nervous she got over that man's troubles. But, of course, he did look awful at first, and nigh about scared me."

'Tana lay still till the steps died away on the stairs, and the voices were heard more faintly on the lower floor. All the day she had waited for the people to leave the stranger in the next room alone; and, for the first time, no voice of visitors broke the silence of the upper floor.

She slipped to the door and listened. Her movements were stealthy as that of some forest animal evading a hunter. She turned the knob softly, and with still swiftness was inside the stranger's room, and the door closed behind her.

He certainly was more alert, for his eyes met hers instantly. His look was almost one of fear, and she was trembling visibly.

"I had to come," she said, nervously, in a half whisper, "I heard the letters read, and I have to tell you something I've thought all night--all day--and I have to tell you. Do you understand? Try to understand. Nod your head if you do. Do you?"

Her speech was rapid and impatient, while she listened each moment lest a step sound on the stairs again. But in all her eagerness to hear she never looked away from his face, and she uttered a low exclamation of gladness when the man's head bent slowly in assent.

"Oh, I am so glad--so glad! You will get well; you must! Listen! I know you now, and why you looked at me so. You think you saw me up at Revelstoke--I think I remember your face there--and you don't trust me. You are looking for that man--the man that took her away from you. You think I could find a trail to him; but you are wrong. He is dead, and I know she is--I _know_! Your name was the last word she said--'Joe.' She wanted you to forgive her, and not cross _his_ path. You don't believe me, perhaps; but it is all true. I went to the camp with--with the boy she wrote of. She talked of you to me. I had word to give you if we ever met. But how was I to know that Jim Harris was the man--the same man? Do you hear--do you believe me?"

Those burning eyes--eyes in which all of life in him seemed concentrated--looked out on her from the pale, strange face; looked on her until her own cheeks grew colorless, for there was something awful in the searching regard of the man who was but half alive.

"See!" she said, and slipped from her belt a package in which paper rustled, "I've had that plan of the gold find ever since--since she died. She gave it to me, in case you should be--as you are, and no one to look after it for you. Or, if you should go under, she said, I was to look it up. And I started to look it up--yes, I did; but things were against me, and I let it go for a while. But now, listen! If you get well, it means money must do it. See? Dan hasn't very much--not enough to float you long. Now, I've thought it all out. You give up the notion of looking for that man, who wasn't worth a shot of powder when he was alive, and worth less now. It's that notion that's been eating the life out of you. Oh, I've thought it all out! Now you just turn honest prospector, like you was when that man Ingalls first spotted you. I'm only a girl, but I'll try to help make amends for the wrongs he did you. I'll go partners with you. Look! here is the plan; and I'm almost sure I know where the two little streams meet. I've thought of it a heap; but the face of--of that dead girl, kept me from doing anything till I had either found you or knew you were dead. No one knows I have the plan--though _he_ would have cut throats for it. Now do you trust me?"

She held the plan up so he could see it--a queer puzzle of lines and dots; but a glance sufficed, and he turned his eyes again to the face of the girl. Her eagerness, her intensity, awakened him to trust and sympathy. He looked at her and nodded his head.

"Oh, I knew you would!" she breathed, thankfully. "And I'll stand by you--you'll see! I've wanted a chance like this--a chance to make up for some of the devilment he's done to folks--and some he's made me help at. You know who I am, but none of the rest do--and they sha'n't. I'm a new girl now. I want to make up for some of the badness that has been. It's all over; but sometimes I hate the blood in my veins because--you know! And if I can only do _some_ good--"

She paused, for the eyes of the paralyzed man had moved from her face, and were resting on something back of her.

It was Overton! He entered and closed the door, and stood looking doubtful and astonished, while 'Tana rose to her feet trembling and a little pale.

"How long--were you there?" she demanded, angrily.

He looked at her very steadily before making reply--such a curious, searching look that she moved uneasily because of it; but her face remained defiant.

"I just now opened the door," he said at last, speaking in a slow, deliberate way. "I slipped here as quietly as I could, because they told me you were asleep, and I must not make a noise. I got here just as you were telling this man that no one but him should know who you were before you came among us--that is all, I guess."

She had sat down on a seat close to Harris, and dropped her face in her hands.

Overton stood with his back against the door, looking down at her. In his eyes was a keen sorrow as she sat down in that despairing fashion, and crept close to the stranger as though for refuge from _him_.

"I might have avoided telling what I heard," he continued; "but I don't think that would be quite square among friends. Then, as I see you have found a new acquaintance here, I thought maybe you would have something to tell me if you knew what I heard you say to him."

But, kindly as his words were, she seemed to shrink from them.

"No; I can't. Oh, Mr. Dan, I can't--I can't," she muttered, with her head still bowed on the arm of the chair occupied by Harris. "If you can't trust me any more, I can't blame you. But I can't tell you--that's all."

"Then I'll just go down stairs again," he decided, "and you can finish your talk with Harris. I'll keep the rest of the folks from interrupting you as I did. But if you want me, little girl, you know I'll not be far away."

The tears came in her eyes. His persistent kindness to her made her both ashamed and glad, and she reached out her hand.

"Wait," she said, "maybe I have something to tell you," and she unfolded the paper again and showed it to Harris.

"Shall I tell him? Would you rather he would be the man to do the business?" she asked. "You know I'm willing, but I don't know enough myself. Do you want him to be the man?"

Harris nodded his head.

With a look of relief on her face, she turned to Overton, who watched them wonderingly.

"What sort of man is it you want? or what is it you want to tell me?"

"Only that I've found a plan of the ground where he made that rich find the letter told of," she answered, with a bit of a tremble in her voice. "He's never been able to look after it himself, and was afraid to trust any one. But now--"

"And you have the plan--_you_, 'Tana?"

"Yes, I have it. I think I even know where the place is located. But--don't ask me anything about how I got the plan. He knows, and is satisfied--that is all."

"But, 'Tana, I don't understand. You are giving me surprises too thick this evening. If he has found a rich yield of ore, and has taken you into partnership, it means that you will be a rich woman. A streak of pay ore can do more for you than a ranger like myself; so I guess you can afford to drop me."

Her face fell forward in her hands again. The man in the chair looked at her and then turned his eyes pleadingly to the other man, who remained standing close to the door.

Overton recognized the pleading quality of the glance, and was filled with amazement by it. Witchery seemed to have touched the stranger when paralysis touched him, else he would not so quickly have changed from his suspicion of the girl into that mute pleading for her.

She was trying so hard to keep back the tears, and in the effort her jaws were set and her brows drawn together stormily. She looked to him as she had looked in the lodge of Akkomi.

"You don't trust me," she said at last; "that's why you won't help us. But you ought to, for I've never lied to you. If it's because I'm in it that you won't have anything to do with the mine, I'll leave. I won't bother you about that school. I won't bother you about anything. I'll help locate the place if--if Joe here is willing; and then you two can be partners, and I'll be out of it, for I can trust you to take care of him, and see that the money does what it can for him. I can trust you if you can't me. So you are the one to speak up. What is your answer?"

CHAPTER XII.

PARTNERS.

"Well, I've been a 'hoodoo' all my, life; and if I only lead some one into luck now--good luck--oh, wouldn't I learn a sun-dance, and dance it!"

The world was two weeks older, and it was 'Tana who spoke; not the troubled 'Tana who had crouched beside the paralytic and cowered under her fear of Overton's distrust, but a girl grown lighter-hearted by the help of work to be done--work in which she was for once to stand side by side with Overton himself, for his decision about the prospecting had been in her favor. He had "spoken up," as she had asked him to do, and a curious three-cornered partnership had been arranged the next day; a very mysterious partnership, of which no word was told to any one. Only 'Tana suddenly decided that the schooling must wait a little longer. Lyster would have to make the trip to Helena without her; she was not feeling like it just then, and so forth.

Therefore, despite the very earnest arguments of Mr. Lyster, he did have to go alone. During all the journey, he was conscious of a quite unreasonable disappointment, an impatience with even Overton, for not enforcing his authority as guardian, and insisting that she at once commence the many studies in which she was sadly deficient.

But Overton had stood back and said nothing. Lyster did not understand it, and could not succeed in making either of them communicative.

"You'll be back here in less than a month," said Overton. "We will send her then, if she feels equal to it. In the meantime, we'll take the best care we can of her here at the Ferry. I find I will have time to look after her a little until then. I have only one short trip to make up the river; so don't get uneasy about her. She'll be ready to go next run you make, sure."

So Lyster wondered, dissatisfied, and went away. He was even a little more dissatisfied with his last memory of the girl--a vision of her bending over that unknown, helpless miner. His sympathies were with the man. He was most willing to assist, in a financial way, toward taking care of one so unfortunate. But the thing he was not willing to do was to see 'Tana devote herself without restraint to the welfare of a stranger--a man they knew nothing of--a fellow who, of course, could have no appreciation of the great luck he was in to have her constantly beside him. It was a clean waste of exceptionable sympathy; and a squaw, or some miner out of work, would do as well in this case.

He even offered to pay for a squaw, or for any masculine nurse; but the girl had very promptly suggested that he busy himself with his own duties, if he had any. She stated further that he had no control whatever over her actions, and she could not understand--

"I know I have none," he retorted, with some impatience, and yet a good deal of fondness in his handsome eyes. "That is why I'm complaining. I wish I had. And if I had, wouldn't I whisk you away from this uncouth life! I wonder if you will ever let me do so, Tana?"

"I think you'd better be packing your plunder," she remarked, coolly. "If you don't, you'll keep the whole outfit waiting."

And that was how they let even Lyster go away. Not a hint was he given of the all-engrossing plan that bound both 'Tana and Overton to the interests of the passive stranger, who looked at them with intelligence, but who could not speak.

Their partnership was a curious affair, and the arrangement for interests in it was conducted on the one side by nods or shakes of the head, while the other two offered suggestions, and asked questions, until a very clear understanding was arrived at.

Only one knotty discussion had arisen. Overton offered to give one month of time to the search, on condition that one half of the find, if there was any made, should belong to 'Tana, while the original finder should have the other half. He himself would give that much time to helping them out in a friendly way; but more than that he could not give, because of other duties.

To this the man Harris shook his head with all possible vigor, while 'Tana was quite as emphatic in an audible way. Harris desired that all shares be equal, and Overton count himself in for a third. 'Tana approved the plan, insisting that she would not accept an ounce of the dust if he did not. So Dan finally agreed and ended the discussion concerning the division of the gold they might never find.

"And don't be so dead sure that the dirt will pan out well, even if we do find the place," he said, warningly, to 'Tana. "Why, my girl, if the average of dust had been as high as my average of hope over strikes I've made myself, I would have been a billionaire long ago."

"I never heard you talk of prospecting," remarked 'Tana. "All the rest do here, and not you--how is that?"

"Oh, prospecting strikes one like a fever; sometimes a man recovers from it, or seems to for a while. I had the fever bad about two years ago--out in Nevada. Well, I left there. I sunk my stock of capital in a very big hole, and lost my enthusiasm for a while. Maybe I will find it again, drifting along the Kootenai; but as yet it has not struck me hard. From what I can gather, this fellow must simply have dropped on a nugget or little pocket, and something must have made him distrust his partner to such an extent that he kept the secret find to himself. So there evidently has been no testing of the soil, no move toward development. We may never find an ounce of metal, for such disappointments have been even where very large nuggets have been found. You must not expect too much of this search. Golden hope lets you down hard when you do fall with it."

But, despite his warnings, he made arrangements for their river journey with all speed possible. The three of them were to go; and, as chaperon, Mrs. Huzzard was persuaded to join their queer "picnic" party, for that was the idea given abroad concerning their little trip to the north. It was to be a venture in the interests of Harris--supposedly the physical interests; though Captain Leek did remark, with decided emphasis, that it was the first time he ever knew of a man being sent out to live in the woods as a cure for paralysis.

But the preparations were made; even the fact that Mrs. Huzzard was seized with an unreasonable attack of rheumatism on the eve of departure did not deter them at all.

"Unless you need me to stay here and look after you, we'll go just the same," decided 'Tana. "A squaw won't be much of a substitute for you; but she'll be better than no one, and we'll go."

So the squaw was secured, through the agency of her husband, whom Overton knew, and who was to take their camp outfit up the river for them. This was one reason why Mrs. Huzzard, as she watched them depart, was a little thankful for the visitation of rheumatism.

Their camp was only a day old when 'Tana announced her willingness to dance if only good fortune would come to her.

It seemed a thing probable, for as Overton poured water slowly from a tin pan into the shallow little stream, there were left in the bottom of the pan, as the last sifting bit of soil was washed out, some tiny bits of yellow the size of a pin-head, and one as large as a grain of wheat.

'Tana gave a little ecstatic cry as she bent over it and touched the particles with her finger.

"Oh, Dan--it is the gold!--the real gold! and we are millionaires!--millionaires, and you would not believe it!"

He raised his finger warningly, and shook his head.

"Wait until we are millionaires before you commence to shout," he advised. "It is a good show here--yes; but, after all, it may be only a chance washing from hills far enough away. Show them to Harris, though; he may be interested, though he appears to me very indifferent about the matter."

"He don't seem to care," she agreed. "He just looks at us as though we were a couple of children he had found a new plaything for. But don't you think he looks brighter?"

"Well, yes; the river trip has done him good, instead of the harm the Ferry folks prophesied. But you run along and show him the 'yellow,' and don't draw the squaw's attention to it."

The squaw was wrapped neck and heels in a blanket, although the day was one of the warmest of summer; and stretched asleep in the sun, she gave no heed to the quick, light step of the girl.

Neither did Harris, at whose tent door she lay. He must have thought it was the stoical, indifferent Indian, for he gave her a quick, startled glance as he heard her surprised "Oh!" at the door. Then she walked directly to him, lifted his right hand, and let go again. It fell on his knee in the old, helpless way.

"But you did raise it," she said, accusingly. "I saw you as I came to the door. You stretched out your hand."

He looked at her and nodded very slightly, then looked at his hand and appeared trying to lift it; but gave up, and shook his head sadly.

"You mean you moved it a little once, but can't do it again?" she asked, and he nodded assent.

"Oh, well, that's all right," she continued, cheerfully. "You are sure to get along all right, now that you have commenced to manage your hands if ever so little. But just at first, when I saw you, I had a mighty queer notion come into my head. I thought you were getting over that stroke faster than you let us know. But I'm too suspicious, ain't I? Maybe it's a bad thing for folks to trust strangers too much in this world; but it is just as bad for a girl to grow up where she can't trust any one. Don't you think so?"

The man nodded. They had many conversations like that, and she had grown not to notice his lack of speech nearly so much as at first. He was so good a listener, and she had become so used to his face gradually gaining again expressive power, that she divined his wishes more readily than the others.

"But trusting don't cut any figure in what I came to speak to you about," she continued. "No 'trust and hope on, brethren,' about this, I guess," and she held the grains of yellow metal before his eyes. "There it is--the gold! Dan found it in the little hollow where the spring is. Is that where you found it?"

He shook his head, but looked pleased at the show they had found.

"Was it bigger bundles of it than this you struck?"

He nodded assent.

"Bigger than this! Well, it must have been rich. These lumps are enough in size if they only turn out enough in number. Oh, how I wish you had put the very spot on that plan of the ground and the rivers! Still, I suppose you were right to be cautious. And if I hadn't been on a lone trail through this country last spring, and got lost, and happened to notice the two little streams running into the river so close to each other, we might have had a year's journey along the Kootenai before we could have found the particular little stream and followed the right one to its source. I think we are close on the trail now, Joe."

He shook his head energetically when she called him Joe.

"Well, I forget," she said. "You see, I've been thinking for months about finding Joe Hammond; and now that I've found you, I can't get used to thinking you are Jim Harris. What's the use of your changing your name, anyway? You did it so you could trail him, your partner, better. But what was the use, with him well and strong, and with devils back of him, and you alone and barely able to crawl? Your head was wrong, Joe--Jim, I mean. If you hadn't been looney, you'd just have settled down and worked your claim, got rich, and then looked for your man."

He shook his head impatiently, and looked at her with as much of a frown as his locked muscles would allow, and a very queer, hard smile about his eyes and mouth.

"Ah!" and 'Tana shivered a little; "don't look like that, Joe. You wouldn't get any Sunday-school prizes for a meek and lowly spirit if the manager saw you fix your face in that fashion. I guess I know how you felt. If you had just so much strength, and couldn't hope for more, you wouldn't waste it looking for gold while he was above ground. Now, ain't I about right?"

He gave no assent, but smiled in a more kindly way at the shrewdness of her guess.

"You won't own up, but I know I am right," she said; "and the way I know it is because I think I'd feel just like that myself if some one hurt me bad. I wonder if girls often feel that way. I guess not. I know Ora Harrison, the doctor's girl, don't. She says her prayers every night, and asks God to let her enemies have good luck. U'm! I can't do that."

The man watched her as she sat silent for a little, looking out into the still, warm sunshine. The squaw slumbered on, and the girl stared across her, and her face grew sad and moody with some hard thought.

"It's awful to hate," she said, at last. "Don't you think it is?--to hate so that you can't breathe right when the person you hate comes near where you are--to be able to _feel_ if he comes near, even when you don't see or hear him, to feel a devil that rises up in your breast and makes you want to get a knife and cut--cut deep, until the blood you hate runs away from the face you hate, and leaves it white and cold. Ah! it's bad, I reckon, to have some one hate you; but it's a thousand times worse to hate back. It makes the prettiest day black when the devil tells you of the hate you must remember, and you can't pray it away, and you can't forget it, and you can't help it! Oh, dear!"

She put her hands over her eyes and leaned her head against his hand. He felt her tears, but could not comfort her.

"You see, I know--how you felt," she said, trying to speak steadily. "Girls shouldn't know; girls should have love and good thoughts taught to them. I--I've dreamed dreams of what a girl's life ought to be like; something like Ora's home, where her mother kisses her and loves her, and her father kisses and loves them both. I went to their home once, and I never could go again. I was starving for the kind of home she has, and I knew I never would get it. That is the hardest part of it--to know, no matter how hard you try to be good, all your life, you can't get back the good thoughts and the love that should have been yours when you were little--the good thoughts that would have kept hate from growing in your heart, until it is stronger than you are. Oh, it's awful!"

The squaw, who did not understand English, but did understand tears, rolled over and peered out from her blanket at the girl who knelt there as at the feet of a confessor. But the girl did not see her; she still knelt there, almost whispering now.

"And the worst of it is, Joe, after they are dead--the ones you hate--then the devil in you commences to torment you by making you think of some good points among the bad ones; some little kind word that would have made the hate in your heart less if it had not been for your own terrible wickedness. And it gnaws and torments you just like a rat gnawing the heart out of a log for a nest. And hate is terrible! whether it is live hate, or dead, it is terrible. Maybe I won't feel so bad now that I've said out loud to some one how I feel--how much harder my heart is than it ought to be. I couldn't tell any one else. But you hate, too, you know. Maybe you know, too, that dead hate hurts worst--that it haunts like a ghost."

She looked up at him, and saw again that queer, wise smile about his lips.

"You don't believe he's dead!" she said, and her face grew paler. "You think he's still alive, and that is why you don't want folks to use your old name. You are laying for him yet, and you so helpless you can't move!"

The man only looked at her grimly. He would not deny; he would not assent.

"But you are wrong," she persisted. "He is dead. The Indians told me so--Akkomi told me so. Would they lie to me? Joe, can't you let the hate go by, now that he is dead--dead?"

But no motion answered her, though his eyes rested on her kindly enough. Then the squaw arose and slouched away to pick up firewood in the forest, and the girl arose, too, and touched his hand.

"Well, whether you can or not, I am glad I told you what I did. Maybe it won't worry me so much now; for sometimes, just when I'm almost happy, the ghost of that bad hate seems to whisper, whisper, and there ain't any more good times for me. I'm glad I told you. I would not have, though, if you could talk like other folks, but you can't."

She got him a drink of water, slipped their first find of the gold into his pocket, and then stood at the tent door, watching for Overton.

But he did not come, and after a little she picked up the pan again and started for the small stream where she had left him.

The man in the chair watched her go, and when she was out of sight, that right hand was again slowly raised from the chair.

"C--an't I?" he whispered, in a strange, indistinct way. "Poor lit--tle girl! poor little--girl!"

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TRACK IN THE FOREST.

Their camp was about a mile from the Kootenai River, and close to a stream of depth sufficient to carry a canoe; while, a little way north of their camp, a beautiful spring of clear water gurgled out from under a little bank, and added its portion to the larger stream that flowed eastward to the river.

There was a little peculiarity about the spring, which made it one to remember--or, rather, two to remember, for it was really a twin, and its sister stream slipped from the other side of the narrow ledge and ran north for a little way, and then turned to the east and emptied into the Kootenai, not a hundred yards from the stream into which its mate had run.

The two springs were not twenty feet apart, and lay direct north and south from each other. Then their wide curves, in opposite directions, left within their circle a tract of land like an island, for the streams bounded it entirely except for that narrow neck of rock and soil joining it to the bigger hills to the west.

It was in the vicinity of the two springs that the rude sketch of Harris bade them search; but more definite directions than that he had not given. He had marked a tree where the north stream joined the river; and finding that as a clew, they followed the stream to its source. When they reached the larger stream, navigable for a mile, they concluded to move their tents there, for no lovelier place could be found.

It was 'Tana and Overton who tramped over the lands where the streams lay, and did their own prospecting for location. He was surprised to find her knowledge of the land so accurate. The crude drawing was as a solved problem to her; she never once made a wrong turn.

"Well, I've thought over it a heap," she said, when he commented on her clever ideas. "I saw that marked tree as we went down to the Ferry, and I remembered where it was; and the trail is not hard if you only get started on it right. It's getting started right that counts--ain't it, Dan?"

There seemed fewer barriers between them in the free, out-of-door life, where no third person's views colored their own. They talked of Lyster, and missed him; yet Dan was conscious that if Lyster were with them, he would have come second instead of first in her confidences, and her friendly, appealing ways.

Whether he trusted her or not, she did not know. He had not asked a question as to how that survey of the land came to her; but he watched Harris sometimes when the girl paid him any little attention, and he could read only absolute trust in the man's eyes.

Overton was not given to keen analysis of people or motives; a healthy unconcern pervaded his mind as to the affairs of most people. But sometimes the girl's character, her peculiar knowledge, her mysterious past, touched him with a sense of strange confusion, yet in the midst of the confusion--the deepest of it--he had put all else aside when she appealed to him, and had followed her lead into the wilderness.

And as she ran from him with the particles of gold, and carried them, as he bade her, to Harris, he followed her with his gaze until she disappeared through the green wall of the bushes. Once he started to follow her, and then stopped, suddenly muttered something about a "cursed fool," and flung himself face down in the tall grass.

"It's got to end here," he said, aloud, as men grow used to thinking when they live alone in the woods much. Then he raised himself on his elbows and looked over the little grassy dip of the land to where the stream from the hills sparkled in the warm sun; and then away beyond to where the evergreens raised their dark heads along the heights, looking like somber guardians keeping ward over the sunny valley of the twin springs. Over them all his gaze wandered, and then up into the deep forest above him--a forest unbroken from there to the swift Columbia.

The perfect harmony of it all must have oppressed him until he felt himself the one discordant note, for he closed his eyes with a sigh that was almost a groan.

"I'll see it all again--often, I suppose," he muttered; "but never quite as it is now--never, for it's got to end. The little bits of gold I found are a warning of the changes to come here--that is the way it seems to me. Queer how a man will change his idea of life in a year or so! There have been times when I would have rejoiced over the prospect of wealth there is here; yet all I am actually conscious of is regret that everything must change--the place--the people--all where gold is king. Pshaw! what a fool I would seem to any one else if he knew. Yet--well, I have dreamed all my days of a sort of life where absolute happiness could be lived. Other men do the same, I suppose--yes, of course. I wonder if others also come in reach of it too late. I suppose so. Well, reasoning won't change it. I marked out my own path--marked it out with as little thought as many another fool; but I've got to walk in it just the same, and cursing back don't help luck. But I had to have a little pow-wow all alone and be sorry for myself, before turning my back on the man I'd like to be--and--the rest of my dreams that have come in sight for a little while but can never come nearer--There she comes again! I'm glad of it, for she will at least keep me from drifting into dreams alone."

But she appeared to be dreaming a little herself. At any rate, the scene she had passed through in the tent left memories too dark with feeling to be quickly dispelled, and he noticed at once the change in her face, and the traces of tears left about her eyes.

"What has hurt you?" he asked.

She shook her head and said:

"Nothing."

"Oh! So you leave here jolly enough, and run around to camp, and cry about nothing--do you?" he asked, with evident unbelief. "Were you crying for joy over those little grains of gold--or over your loneliness in being so far from the Ferry folks?"

She laughed at the mere idea of either--and laughter dispels tear traces so quickly from faces that are young. "Lonely!" she exclaimed: "lonely here? why, I feel a heap more satisfied here than down at the Ferry, where the whole place smelled like saw-mills and new lumber. I always had a grudge against saw-mills, for they spoil all the lovely woods. That is why I like all this," and she made a sweep of her arm, embracing all the territory in sight; "for in here not a tree has been touched with an ax. Lonely here! Why, Dan, I've been so perfectly happy that I'm afraid--yes, I am. Didn't you ever feel like that--just as if you were too happy to last, and you were afraid some trouble would come and end it all?"

But Overton stooped to lift the pick he had been using, and so turned his face away from her.

"Well, I'm glad you are not getting blue over lack of company," he remarked; "for we have only commenced prospecting, you know, and it will be at least a week before we can hope to send for any one else to join us."

"A week! Do you intend to send for other folks, then?" and her tone was one of regret. "Oh, it would be all different, then. My pretty camp would be spoiled for me if folks should come talking and whistling up our creek. Don't let any one know so soon!"

"You don't know what you are talking of," he answered, a little roughly. "This is a business trip. We did not come up here just because we were looking for a pretty picture of a place to camp in."

"Oh!" and surprise and dismay were in the exclamation. "Then you don't care for it--you want other people just as soon as you find the rich streak where the gold is? Well"--and she looked again over their little chosen valley--"I almost hope you won't find it very soon--not for several days. I would like to live just like this for a whole week. And I thought--I was so sure you liked it, too."

"Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently enough, evidently giving his whole attention to examining the soil he had commenced to dig up again, "I like the camp all right, but we can't just stand around and admire it, if we want to accomplish what we came for. And see here, 'Tana," he said, and for the first time he looked at her with a sort of unwillingness, "you must know that this gold is going to make a big change in things for you. You can't live out in the woods with a couple of miners and an Indian squaw, after your fortune is made--don't you see that? You must go to school, and live out in the world where your money will help you to--well, the right sort of society for a girl."

"What is the use of having money if it don't help you to live where you please?" she demanded. "I thought that was what money was for. I'd a heap rather stay poor here in the woods, with--with the folks I know, instead of going where I'll have to buy friends with money. Don't think I'd want the sort of friends who have to be baited with money, anyway."

He stared at her helplessly. She was saying to him the things he had called himself a fool for thinking. But he could not call her a fool. He could only stifle an impatient groan, and wonder how he was to reason her into thinking as other girls would think of wealth and its advantages.

"Why were you so wild about finding the gold, if you care so little for the things it brings?" he demanded, and she pointed toward the tents.

"It was for him I thought at first--of how the money would, maybe, help to make him well--get him great doctors, and all that. The world had been rough on him--people had brought him trouble, and--and I thought, maybe, I could help clear it away. That was what I had in my mind at first."

"You need things, too, don't you?--not doctors, but education--books, beautiful things. You want pictures, statues, fine music, theaters--all such things. Well, the money will help you get them, and get people to enjoy them with you. I've heard you talk to Max about how you would like to live, and what you would like to see; and I think you can soon. But, 'Tana, you will live then where people will be more critical than we are here--"

"More like Captain Leek?" she asked, with a deep wrinkle between her brows; "for if they are, I'll stay here."

"N--no; not like him; and yet they will think considerable of his sort of ideas, too," he answered, blunderingly. "One thing sure is this: When your actual work here is over, you must go at once back to Mrs. Huzzard. It was necessary for you to come, else I wouldn't have allowed it. But, little girl, when you get among those fine friends you are going to have, I don't want them to think you had a guardian up here who didn't take the first bit of civilized care of you. And that's what they would think if I let you stay here, just as though you were a boy. So you see, 'Tana, I just felt I'd have to tell you plain that you would have to try and fit yourself to city ways of living. And when you are a millionairess, as you count on being, we three partners can't keep on living in tents in the Kootenai woods."

She pulled handfuls of the plumy grasses beside her, and stared sulkily ahead of her. Evidently it was a great deal for her to understand at once.

"Would they blame you--_you_ for it, if they knew?" she asked at last.

"Yes, they would--if they knew," he said, savagely; and turning away, he walked across the little grassy level to where the abrupt little wall or ledge commenced--the one from under which the springs flowed.

She thought he was simply out of patience with her. He was going to the woods--anywhere to be rid of her and her stupid ideas; and swift as a bird, she slipped after him.

"Then I'll go, Dan," she said reassuringly, catching his arm. "So don't be vexed at me for being stubborn. Come! let me look for the gold with you, and then--then I'll go when you say."

"It's a bargain," he said, briefly, and drew his arm away. "And if we are going to do any more prospecting this evening, we had better begin."

He stood facing her, with his back to the bank that was the first tiny step toward the mountain that rose dark and shadowy far above. He had walked along there before, looking with a miner's attention to the lay of the land. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and a light of comprehension brightened his eyes.

"I've got a clew to it, sure, 'Tana!" he said, eagerly. "Do you know where we are standing? Well, if I don't make a big mistake, a good-sized river once rolled along just where we are now. The little creek is all that's left of it. This soil is all a comparatively recent deposit, and it and the gold dust in it have been washed down from the mountain. Which means that this little valley is only a gateway, and the dust we found is only a trail we are to follow up to the mine from which it came. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I think so," she answered, looking at the green-covered banks, and trying to realize how they looked when a mountain river had cut its way through and covered all the pretty level where the spring stream slipped now. "But doesn't that make the gold seem farther away--much farther? Will we have to move up higher in the mountains?"

"That is a question I need time to answer, but if I am right--if there is a backing of gold ore somewhere above this old river bed, it means a much surer thing than an occasional bit of dust washed out of the mud here. But we won't ignore our little placer digging either. There is an advantage to a poor prospector in having a claim he can work without any machinery but a pick, shovel, and pan; while the gold ore needs a fortune to develop it. Let us go back and talk to Harris, to see if his evidence substantiates my theory. If not, we will just stake out our claims on the level, and be thankful. Later we will investigate the hills."

The girl walked slowly beside him back to their camp. The shadows were commencing to lengthen. It was nearing supper time, and their day had been a busy, tiring one, for they had moved their camp many miles since dawn.

"You are very nearly worn out, aren't you?" he asked, as he noticed her tired eyes and her listless step. "You see, you would tramp along the shore this morning when I wanted you to stay in the boat."

"Yes, I know," she answered; "but I don't think that made me tired. Maybe it's the gold we are to find. How queer it is, Dan, that a person will want and want some one thing all his life, and he thinks it will make him so happy; and yet, when at last he gets in sight of it, he isn't happy at all. That is the way I feel about our gold. I suppose I ought to be singing and laughing and dancing for joy. I said I would, too. Yet here I am feeling as stupid as can be, and almost afraid of the fine life you say I must go to. Oh, bother! I won't think over it any more. I am going to get supper."

For while 'Tana would accept the squaw as an assistant and a gatherer of fuel, she decidedly declined to have her installed as head cook. She herself filled that office with a good deal of girlish conceit, encouraged by the praise of Overton and the approving nods of Harris.

There had been a fifth member of their party, Flap-Jacks' husband. 'Tana had bestowed that name on the squaw in the very beginning of their acquaintance. But Overton had sent him on an errand back to Sinna Ferry, not wishing to have his watchful eyes prying into their plans in the very beginning of their prospecting. And it was not until he had started on his journey that the pick and pan had disclosed the golden secret of the old river bed.

Harris watched the two approach, and his keen gray eyes turned with a certain fondness from one to the other. They were as guardian angels to him, and their mutual care of him had brought them closer to each other there in the wilderness than they ever had been in the little settlement farther down the river.

"Squaw not here yet?" asked 'Tana, and at once set to work preparing things for the supper.

Harris shook his head, but at that moment their hand-maiden did return, carrying a great load of sticks for fire, and then brought to the girl a number of fine trout she had caught almost at their door. She built the fire outside, where two forked sticks had been driven into the ground, and across them a pole lay, from which kettles could be hung. As 'Tana set the coffee pot on the hot coals, the Indian woman spoke to her in that low voice which is characteristic of the red people.

"More white men to come into camp?" she asked.

"White men? No. Why do you ask?"

"I see tracks--not Dan's tracks--not yours."

"Made when?"

"Now--little while back--only little."

Overton heard their voices, though not their words; and as 'Tana re-entered the wigwam, he glanced around at her with a dubious smile.

"That is the first time I ever heard you actually talking Chinook," he observed; "though I've had an idea you could, ever since the evening in Akkomi's village. It is like your poker playing, though you have been very modest about it."

"I was not the night I played the captain," she answered; "and I think you might let me alone about that, after I gave him back his money."

"That is just the part I can not forgive you for," he said. "He will never get over the idea, now, that you cheated him, and that your conscience got the better of you to such an extent that you tried to wipe a sin away by giving the money back."

"Perhaps I did," she answered, quietly. "I had to settle his conceit some way, for he did bother me a heap sometimes. But I'm done with that."

She seemed rather thoughtful during the frying of the fish and the slicing down of Mrs. Huzzard's last contribution--a brown loaf.

She was disturbed over the footprints seen by the Indian woman--the track of a white man so close to their camp that day, yet who had kept himself from their sight! Such actions have a meaning in the wild countries, and the meaning troubled her. While it would have been the most simple thing in the world to tell Overton and have him make a search, something made her want to do the searching herself--but how?

"I was right in my theory about the old river bed," he said to her, as she poured his coffee. "Harris backs me up in it, and it was ore he found, and not the loose dirt in the soil. So the thing I am going to strike out for is the headquarters where that loose dust comes from."

"Oh! then it was ore you found?" she asked.

Harris nodded his head.

"Ore on the surface--and near here."

That news made her even more anxious about that stranger who had prowled around. Perhaps he, too, was searching for the hidden wealth.

When the supper was over, and the sun had slipped back of the mountain, she beckoned to the squaw, and with the water bucket as a visible errand, they started toward the spring.

But they did not stop there. She wanted to see with her own eyes those footprints, and she followed the Indian down into the woods already growing dusky in the dying day.

The birds were singing their good-night songs, and all the land seemed steeped in repose. Only those two figures, gliding between the trees, carried with them the spirit of unrest.

They reached an open space where no trees grew very close--a bit of marsh land, where the soil was black and tall ferns grew. The squaw led her straight to a place where two of the fern fronds were bent and broken. She parted the green lances, and there beside it was a scraping away of the earth, as though some one walking there had slipped, and in the black sandy loam a shoe had sunk deep. The Indian was right; it was the mark of a white man, for the reds of that country had not yet adopted the footgear of their more advanced neighbors.

"It turn to camp," said the squaw. "Maybe some white thief, so I tell you. Me tell Dan?"

"Wait," answered the girl; and, kneeling down, she studied the slender outline of the foot attentively. "Any more tracks?"

"No more--only leaves stirred nearer to camp; he go that way."

The full moon rose clear and warm in the east, while yet the sun's light lingered over the wilderness. Beautiful flowers shone white and pink and yellow in the opaline light of the evening; and 'Tana mechanically plucked a few that touched her as she passed, but she gave little notice to their beauty. All her thought was on the slender footprint of the man in the woods, and her face looked troubled.

They walked on, looking to right and left in any nook where deep shadows lay, but never a sign could they see of aught that was human besides themselves, until they neared the springs again, when the squaw laid her hand on the arm of the girl.

"Dan," she said, in her low, abrupt way.

The girl, looking up, saw him a little way ahead of them, standing there straight, strong, and surely to be trusted; yet her first impulse was to tell him nothing.

"Take the water and go," she said to the Indian, and the woman disappeared like a mere wraith of a woman in the pale shadows.

"Don't go so far next time when you want to pick flowers in the evening," said Overton, as 'Tana came nearer to him. "You make me realize that I have nerves. If you had not come in sight the instant you did, I should have been after you."

"But nothing will harm us; I am not afraid, and it is pretty in the woods now," she answered lamely, and toyed with the flowers. But the touch of her fingers was nervous, and the same quality trembled in her voice. He noticed it and reaching out took her hand in his very gently, and yet with decision that forced her to look up at him.

"Little girl--what is it? You are sick?"

She shook her head.

"No, I am not--I am not sick," and she tried to free her hand, but could not.

"'Tana," and his teeth closed for a moment on his lip lest he say all the warm words that leaped up from his heart at sight of her face, which looked startled and pale in the moonlight--"'Tana, you won't need me very long; and when you go away, I'll never try to make you remember me. Do you understand, little girl? But just now, while we are so far off from the rest of the world, won't you trust me with your troubles--with the thoughts that worry you? I would give half of my life to help you. Half of it! Ah, good God! all of it! 'Tana--"

In his voice was all the feeling which compels sympathy, or else builds up a wall that bars it out. But in the eyes of the girl, startled though she was, no resistance could be read. Her hand was in his, her face lifted to him, and alight with sudden gladness. In his eyes she read the force of an irresistible power taking possession of a man's soul and touching her with its glory.

"'Tana!" he said very softly, in a tone she had never before heard Dan Overton use--a tone hushed and reverent and appealing. "_'Tana!_"

Did he guess all the stormy emotions locked alone in the girl's heart, and wearing out her strength? Did he guess all the childish longing to feel strong, loving arms around her as a shield? His utterance of her name drew her to him. His arm fell around her shoulders, and her head was bowed against his breast. The hat she wore had fallen to the ground, and as he bent over her, his hand caressed her hair tenderly, but there was more of moody regret than of joy in his face.

"'Tana, my girl! poor little girl!" he said softly.

But she shook her head.

"No--not so poor now," she half whispered and looked up at him--"not so very poor."

Then she uttered a half-strangled scream of terror and broke away from him; for across his shoulder she saw a face peering at her from the shadows of the over-hanging bushes above them, a white, desperate face, at sight of which she staggered back and would have fallen had Overton not caught her.

He had not seen the cause of her alarm, and for one instant thought it was himself from whom she shrank.

"Tell me--what is it?" he demanded. "'Tana, speak to me!"

She did not speak, but a rustle in the bushes above them caught his ear; and looking up, he saw a form pass lightly through the shadows and away from them. He could not tell whether it was an Indian, a white man, or even an animal scampering off that way through the bushes. But anything that spied like that and ran when discovered was a thing to shoot at. He dropped his hand to his revolver, but she caught his arm.

"No, Dan! Oh, don't--don't shoot him!"

He stared at her, conscious that it was no ordinary fear that whitened her face. What did it mean? She herself had just come from the woods--pale, agitated, and with only a semblance of flower gathering to explain her absence. Had she met some one there--some one who--

He let go of her and started to run up the side of the steep bank; but swiftly as he moved, she caught him and clung to him, half sobbing.

"Don't go! Oh, Dan, let him go!" she begged, and her grasp made it impossible for him to go unless he picked her up and carried her along.

He stooped, took her head roughly in his hands, and turned her face up, so that the light would fall upon it.

"_Him!_ Then you know who it is?" he said, grimly. "What sort of business is this, 'Tana? Are you going to tell me?"

But she only crouched closer to him, and, sobbing, begged him not to go. Once he tried to break away but lost his footing, and the soil and bits of boulders went clattering down past her.

With a muttered oath of impatience, he gave up the pursuit, and stared down at her with an expression more bitter than any she had ever seen on his face before.

"So you are bound to protect him, are you?" he asked, coldly. "Very well. But if you value him so highly you had better keep him clear of this camp, else he'll find himself ready for a box. Come! get up and go to the tents. That is a better place for you than here. Your coming out here this evening has been a mistake all around--or else mine has. I wish to Heaven I could undo it all."

She stood a little apart from him, but her hand was still outstretched and clasping his arm.

"All, Dan?" she asked, and her mouth trembled. But his own lips were firm enough, as he nodded his head and looked at her.

"All," he said briefly. "Go now; and here are your flowers for which you hunted so long in the woods."

He stooped to pick them up for her from where they had fallen--the white, fragrant things he had thought so beautiful as she came toward him with them in the moonlight.

But as he lifted them from the bank, where they were scattered, he saw something else there which was neither beautiful nor fragrant, but over which he bent with earnest scrutiny. An ordinary looking piece of shale or stone it would have seemed to an inexperienced eye, a thing with irregular veins of a greenish appearance, and the green dotted plainly with yellow--so plainly as to show even in the moonlight the nature of the find.

He turned to the girl and reached it to her with the flowers.

"There! When my foot slipped I broke off that bit of 'float' from the ledge," he said curtly. "Show it to Harris. We have found the gold ore, and I'll stake out the claims to-night. You can afford to leave for civilization now as soon as you please, I reckon, for your work in the Kootenai country is over. Your fortune is made."

CHAPTER XIV.

NEW-COMERS.

Many days went by after that before more time was given to the hunting of gold in that particular valley of the Kootenai lands; for before another day broke, the squaw spoke at the door of Overton's tent and told him the girl was sick with fever, that she talked as a little child babbles and laughs at nothing.

He went with her, and the face he had seen so pale in the moonlight was flushed a rosy red, and her arms tossed meaninglessly, while she muttered--muttered! Sometimes her words were of the gold, and of flowers. He even heard his name on her lips, but only once; and then she cried out that he hurt her. She was ill--very ill; he could see that, and help must be had.

He went for it as swiftly as a boat could be sped over the water. During the very short season of waiting for the doctor and Mrs. Huzzard, he wrote to Lyster, and secured some Indians for work needed. If the doctor thought her able for the journey, he meant to have her brought back in a boat to Sinna Ferry, where she would have something more substantial than canvas walls about her.

But the doctor did not. He was rather mystified by her sudden illness, as there had been no forewarnings of it. That it was caused by some shock was possible; and that it was serious was beyond doubt.

The entire party, and especially Mrs. Huzzard, were taken aback by finding a newly arrived, self-imposed guardian at the door of Tana's tent. It was the blanket-draped figure of old Akkomi, and his gaily painted canoe was pulled up on the bank of the creek.

"I heard on the wind the child was sick," he said briefly to Overton. "I come to ask if you needed help."

But Overton looked at him suspiciously. It was impossible that he could have heard of her illness so soon, though he might have heard of her presence there.

"Were any of your people here at nightfall yesterday?" he asked. The old fellow shook his head.

"No, none of my people," he said briefly; then he puffed away at his pipe, and looked approvingly at Mrs. Huzzard, who tried to pass him without turning her back to him at all, and succeeded in making a circuit bearing some relation to progress made before a throne, though the relationship was rather strained. His approving eyes filled her with terror; for, much as she had reveled in Indian romances (on paper) in her youth, she had no desire to take any active part in them in her middle age.

And so, with the help of the doctor and Mrs. Huzzard, they commenced the nursing of 'Tana back to consciousness and health. Night after night Dan walked alone in the waning moonlight, his heart filled with remorse and blame for which he could find no relief. The gathering of the gold had no longer allurements for him.

But he moved Harris' tent on to one of the claims, and he cut small timber, and in a day and a half had a little log house of two rooms put up and chinked with dry moss and roofed with bark, that 'Tana might have a home of her own, and have it close to where the ore streaked with gold had been found. Then he sent the Indians up the river again, and did with his own hands all labor needed about the camp.

"You'll be sick yourself, Overton," growled the doctor, who slept in the tent with him, and knew that scarce an hour of the night passed that he was not at the door of 'Tana's cabin, to learn if any help was needed, or merely to stand without and listen to her voice as she spoke.

"For mercy's sake, Mr. Dan, do be a little careful of yourself," entreated Mrs. Huzzard; "for if you should get used up, I don't know what I ever would do here in this wilderness, with 'Tana and the paralyzed man and you to look after--to say nothing of the fear I'm in every hour because o' that nasty beast of an Indian that you say is a chief. He is here constant!"

"Proof of your attractive powers," said Overton, reassuringly. "He comes to admire you, that is all."

"And enough, too! And if it wasn't for you that's here to protect me, the good Lord only knows whether I'd ever see a milliner shop or a pie again, as long as I lived. So I am set on your taking more care of yourself--now won't you?"

"Wait until you have cause, before you worry," he advised, "I don't look like a sick man, do I?"

"You don't look like a well one, anyway," she said, looking at him carefully; "and you don't look as I ever saw you look before. You are as hollow eyed as though you had been sick yourself for a month. Altogether, I think your coming out here to camp in the wild woods has been a big mistake."

"It looks like it just now," he agreed, and his eyes, tired and troubled, looked past her into the cabin where 'Tana lay. "Does she seem better?"

"Just about the same. Eight days now since she was took down; and the doctor, he said to-morrow would be the day to hope for a change, either for the better or--"

But the alternative was not a thing easy for the good soul to contemplate, and she left the sentence unfinished and disappeared into the cabin again, while the man outside dropped his head in his hands, feeling the most helpless creature in all the world.

"Better to-morrow, or--worse;" that was what Mrs. Huzzard meant, but could not utter. Better or worse! And if the last, she might be dying now, each minute! And he was powerless to help her--powerless even to utter all the regret, the remorse, the heart-aching sorrow that was with him, for her ears were closed to the sense of words, and his lips were locked by some key of some past.

His own judgment on himself was not light as he went over in his mind each moment of their hours together. Poor little 'Tana! poor little stray!

"I promised not to question her; yes, I promised that, or she would never have left the Indians with me. And I--I was savage with her, just because she would not tell me what she had a perfect right to keep from me if she chose. Even if it was--a lover, what right had I to object? What right to hold her hands--to say all the things I said? If she were a woman, I could tell her all I think--all, and let her judge. But not as it is--not to a girl so young--so troubled--so much of a stray. Oh, God! she shall never be a stray again, if only she gets well. I'd stay here digging forever if I could only send her out in the world among people who will make her happy. And she--the child, the child! said she would rather live here as we did than to have the gold that would make her rich. God! it is hard for a man to forget that, no matter what duty says."

So his thoughts would ramble on each day, each night, and his restlessness grew until Harris took to watching him with a great pity in his eyes, and mutely asked each time he entered if hope had grown any stronger.

By the request of Mrs. Huzzard they had moved Harris into the other room of the cabin, because of a rain which fell one night, and reminded them that his earthen floor might prove injurious to his health. Mrs. Huzzard declared she was afraid, with that room empty; and Harris, though having a partially dead body, had at least a living soul, and she greatly preferred his presence to the spiritless void and the fear of Indian occupancy.

So she shared the room with 'Tana, and the doctor and Overton used one tent, while the squaw used the other. All took turns watching at night beside the girl, who never knew one from the other, but who talked of gold--gold that was too heavy a load for her to carry--gold that ran in streams where she tried to find water to drink and could not--gold that Dan thought was better than friends or their pretty camp. And over those woes she would moan until frightened from them by ghosts, the ghosts she hated, and which she begged them so piteously to keep out of her sight.

So they had watched her for days, and toward the evening of the eighth Overton was keeping an ever-watchful ear for the Indian and the doctor who had gone personally to fetch needed medicines from the settlement.

Akkomi was there as usual. Each day he would come, sit in the doorway of the Harris cabin for hours, and contemplate the helpless man there. When evening arrived he would enter his canoe and go back to his own camp, which at that time was not more than five miles away.

Overton, fearing that Harris would be painfully annoyed by the presence of this self-invited visitor, offered to entertain him in his own tent, if Harris preferred. But while Harris looked with no kindly eye on the old fellow, he signified that the Indian should remain, if he pleased. This was a decision so unexpected that Overton asked Harris if he had ever met Akkomi before.

He received an affirmative nod, which awakened his curiosity enough to make him question the Indian.

The old fellow nodded and smoked in silence for a little while before making a reply; then he said:

"Yes, one summer, one winter ago, the man worked in the hills beyond the river. Our hunters were there and saw him. His cabin is there still."

"Who was with him?"

"White man, stranger," answered Akkomi briefly. "This man stranger, too, in the Kootenai country--stranger from away somewhere there," and he pointed vaguely toward the east. "Name--Joe--so him called."

"And the other man?"

"Other man stranger, too--go way--never come back. This one go away, too; but he come back."

"And that is all you know of them?"

"All. Joe not like Indian friends," and the old fellow's eyes wrinkled up in the semblance of laughter; "too much tenderfoot, maybe."

"But Joe's partner," persisted Overton, "he was not tenderfoot? He had Indian friends on the Columbia River."

"Maybe," agreed the old fellow, and his sly, bead-like eyes turned toward his questioner sharply and were as quickly withdrawn, "maybe so. They hunt silver over there. No good."

Just inside the door Harris sat straining his ears to catch every word, and Akkomi's assumption of bland ignorance brought a rather sardonic smile to his face, while his lips moved in voiceless mutterings of anger. Impatience was clearly to be read in his face as he waited for Overton to question further, and his right hand opened and closed in his eagerness.

But no other questions were asked just then; for Overton suddenly walked away, leaving the crafty-eyed Akkomi alone in his apparent innocence of Joe's past or Joe's partner.

The old fellow looked after him kindly enough, but shook his head and smoked his dirty black pipe, while an expression of undivulged knowledge adorned his withered physiognomy.

"No, Dan, no," he murmured. "Akkomi good friend to little sick squaw and to you; but he not tell--not tell all things."

Then his ears, not so keen as in years gone by, heard sounds on the water, sounds coming closer and closer. But Dan's younger ears had heard them first, and it was to learn the cause that he had left so abruptly and walked to the edge of the stream.

It was the doctor and the Indian boatman who came in sight first around the bend of the creek. Back of them was another canoe, but a much larger, much more pretentious one. In this was Lyster and a middle-aged gentleman of rather portly build, who dressed in a fashion very fine when compared with the average garb of the wilderness.

Overton watched with some surprise the approach of the man, who was an utter stranger to him, and yet who bore a resemblance to some one seen before. A certain something about the shape of the nose and general contour of the face seemed slightly familiar. He had time to notice, also, that the hair was auburn in color, and inclined to curl, and that back of him sat a female form. By the time he had made these observations, their boat had touched the shore, and Lyster was shaking his hand vigorously.

"I got your letter, telling me of your big strike. It caught me before I was quite started for Helena, so I just did some talking for you where I thought it would do the most good, old fellow, and turned right around and came back. I've been wild to hear about 'Tana. How is she? This is my friend, Mr. T. J. Haydon, my uncle's partner, you know. He has made this trip to talk a little business with you, and when I learned you were not at the settlement, but up here in camp, I thought it would be all right to fetch him along."

"Of course it is all right," answered Overton, assuringly. "Our camp has a welcome for your friend even if we haven't first-class accommodations for him. And is this lady also a friend?"

For Lyster, forgetful of his usual gallantry, had allowed the doctor to assist the other voyager from the canoe--a rather tall lady of the age generally expressed as "uncertain," although the certainty of it was an indisputable fact.

A rather childish hat was perched upon her thin but carefully frizzed hair, and over her face floated a white veil, that was on a drawing string around the crown of the hat and drooped gracefully and chastely over the features beneath, after the fashion of 1860. A string of beads adorned the thin throat, and the rest of her array was after the same order of elegance.

The doctor and Lyster exchanged glances, and Lyster was silently proclaimed master of ceremonies.

"Oh, yes," he said, easily. "Pardon me that I am neglectful, and let me introduce you to Miss Slocum--Miss Lavina Slocum of Cherry Run, Ohio. She is the cousin of our friend, Mrs. Huzzard, and was in despair when she found her relative had left the settlement; so we had the pleasure of her company when she heard we were coming direct to the place where Mrs. Huzzard was located."

"She will be glad to see you, miss," said Overton, holding out his hand to her in very hearty greeting. "Nothing could be more welcome to this camp just now than the arrival of a lady, for poor Mrs. Huzzard has been having a sorry siege of care for the last week. If you will come along, I will take you to her at once."

Gathering up her shawl, parasol, a fluffy, pale pink "cloud," and a homemade and embroidered traveling bag, he escorted her with the utmost deference to the door of the log cabin, leaving Lyster without another word.

That easily amused gentleman stared after the couple with keen appreciation of the picture they presented. Miss Slocum had a queer, mincing gait which her long limbs appeared averse to, and the result was a little hitchy. But she kept up with Overton, and surveyed him with weak blue eyes of gratitude. He appeared to her a very admirable personage--a veritable knight of the frontier, possibly a border hero such as every natural woman has an ideal of.

But to Lyster, Dan with his arms filled with female trappings and a lot of pink zephyr blown about his face and streaming over his shoulder, like a veritable banner of Love's color, was a picture too ludicrous to be lost. He gazed after them in a fit of delight that seemed likely to end in apoplexy, because he was obliged to keep his hilarity silent.

"Just look at him!" he advised, in tones akin to a stage whisper. "Isn't he a great old Dan? And maybe you think he would not promenade beside that make-up just as readily on Broadway, New York, or on Chestnut street, Philadelphia? Well, sir, he would! If it was necessary that some man should go with her, he would be the man to go, and Heaven help anybody he saw laughing! If you knew Dan Overton twenty years you would not see anything that would give you a better key to his nature than just his manner of acting cavalier to that--wonder."

But Mr. Haydon did not appear to appreciate the scene with the same degree of fervor.

"Ah!" he said, turning his eyes with indifference to the two figures, and with scrutiny over the little camp-site and primitive dwellings. "Am I to understand, then, that your friend, the ranger, is a sort of modern Don Juan, to whom any order of femininity is acceptable?"

"No," said Lyster, facing about suddenly. "And if my thoughtless manner of speech would convey such an idea of Dan Overton, then (to borrow one of Dan's own expressions) I deserve to be kicked around God's footstool for a while."

"Well, when you speak of his devotion to any sort of specimen--"

"Of course," agreed Lyster. "I see my words were misleading--especially to one unaccustomed to the life and people out here. But Dan, as Don Juan, is one of the most unimaginable things! Why, he does not seem to know women exist as individuals. This is the only fault I have to find with him; for the man who does not care for some woman, or never has cared for any woman, is, according to my philosophy, no good on earth. But Dan just looks the other way if they commence to give him sweet glances--and they do, too! though he thinks that collectively they are all angels. Yes, sir! let the worst old harridan that ever was come to Overton with a tale of virtue and misfortune, and he will take off his hat and divide up his money, giving her a good share, just because she happens to be a woman. That is the sort of devotion to women I had reference to when I spoke first; the wonder to me is that he has not been caught in a matrimonial noose long ere this by some thrifty maid or matron. He seems to me guileless game for them, as his sympathy is always so easily touched."

"Perhaps he is keeping free from bonds that he may marry this ward of his for whom he appears so troubled," remarked Mr. Haydon.

Lyster looked anything but pleased at the suggestion.

"I don't think he would like to hear that said," he returned. "'Tana is only a little girl in his eyes--one left in his charge at the death of her own people, and one who appeals to him very strongly just now because of her helplessness."

"Well," said Mr. Haydon, with a slight smile, "I appear to be rather unfortunate in all my surmises over the people of this new country, especially this new camp. I do not know whether it is because I am in a stupid mood, or because I have come among people too peculiar to be judged by ordinary standards. But the thing I am interested in above and beyond our host and his _protge_ is the gold mine he wrote you to find a buyer for. I think I could appreciate that, at least, at its full value, if I was allowed a sight of the output."

The doctor had hurried to the cabin even before Overton and Miss Slocum, so the two gentlemen were left by themselves, to follow at their leisure. Mr. Haydon seemed a trifle resentful at this indifferent reception.

"One would think this man had been making big deals in gold ore all his life, and was perfectly indifferent as to whether our capital is to be used to develop this find of his," he remarked, as they approached the cabin. "Did you not tell me he was a poor man?"

"Oh, yes. Poor in gold or silver of the United States mint," agreed Lyster, with a strong endeavor to keep down his impatience of this magnate of the speculative world, this wizard of the world of stocks and bonds, whom his partners deferred to, whose nod and beck meant much in a circle of capitalists. "I myself, when back East," thought Lyster to himself, "considered Haydon a wonderful man, but he seems suddenly to have grown dwarfed and petty in my eyes, and I wonder that I ever paid such reverence to his judgment."

He smiled dubiously to himself at the consciousness that the wide spirit of the West must have already changed his own views of things somewhat, since once he had thought this marketer of mines superior.

"But no one out here would think of calling Dan Overton poor," he continued, "simply because he is not among the class that weighs a man's worth by the dollars he owns. He is considered one of the solid men of the district--one of the best men to know. But no one thinks of gauging his right to independence by the amount of his bank account."

Mr. Haydon shrugged his shoulders, and tapped his foot with the gold-headed umbrella he carried.

"Oh, yes. I suppose it seems very fine in young minds and a young country, to cultivate an indifference to wealth; but to older minds and civilization it grows to be a necessity. Is that object over there also one of the solid men of the community?"

It was Akkomi he had reference to, and the serene manner with which the old fellow glanced over them, and nonchalantly smoked his pipe in the doorway, did give him the appearance of a fixture about the camp, and puzzled Lyster somewhat, for he had never before met the ancient chief.

He nodded his head, however, saying "How?" in friendly greeting, and the Indian returned the civility in the same way, but gave slight attention to the speaker. All the attention of his little black eyes was given to the stranger, who did not address him, and whose gaze was somewhat critical and altogether contemptuous.

Then Mrs. Huzzard, without waiting for them to reach the door, hurried out to greet Lyster.

"I'm as glad as any woman can be to see you back again," she said heartily, "though it's more than I hoped for so soon, and--Yes, the doctor says she's a little better, thank God! And your name has been on her lips more than once--poor dear!--since she has been flighty, and all the thanks I feel to you for bringing Lavina right along I can never tell you; for it seems a month since I saw a woman last. I just can't count the squaw! And do you want to come in and look at our poor little girl now? She won't know you; but if you wish--"

"May I?" asked Lyster, gratefully. Then he turned to the stranger.

"Your daughter back home is about the same age," he remarked. "Will you come in?"

"Oh, certainly," answered Mr. Haydon, rather willing to go anywhere away from the very annoying old redskin of the pipe and the very--very scrutinizing eyes.

The doctor and Overton had passed into the room where Harris was, and Mrs. Huzzard halted at the door with her cousin, so that the two men approached the bed alone. The dark form of Akkomi had slipped in after them like a shadow, but a very alert one, for his head was craned forward that his eyes might lose never an expression of the fine stranger's face.

'Tana's eyes were closed, but her lips moved voicelessly. The light was dim in the little room, and Lyster bent over to look at her, and touched her hot forehead tenderly.

"Poor little girl! poor 'Tana!" he said, and turned the covering from about her chin where she had pulled it. He had seen her last so saucy, so defiant of all his wishes, and the change to this utter helplessness brought the quick tears to his eyes. He clasped her hand softly and turned away.

"It is too dark in here to see anything very clearly," said the stranger, who bent toward her slightly, with his hat in his hand.

Then Akkomi, who had intercepted the light somewhat, moved from the foot of the bed to the stranger's side, and a little sunshine rifted through the small doorway and outlined more clearly the girl's face on the pillow.

The stranger, who was quite close to her, uttered a sudden gasping cry as he saw her face more clearly, and drew back from the bed.

The dark hand of the Indian caught his white wrist and held him, while with the other hand he pointed to the curls of reddish brown clustering around the girl's pale forehead, and from them to the curls on Mr. Haydon's own bared head. They were not so luxuriant as those of the girl, but they were of the same character, almost the same color, and the vague resemblance to something familiar by which Overton had been impressed was at once located by the old Indian the moment the stranger lifted the hat from his head.

"Sick, maybe die," said Akkomi, in a voice that was almost a whisper--"die away from her people, away from the blood that is as her blood," and he pointed to the blue veins on the white man's wrist.

With an exclamation of fear and anger, Mr. Haydon flung off the Indian's hand.

Lyster, scarce hearing the words spoken, simply thought the old fellow was drunk, and was about to interfere, when the girl, as though touched by the contest above her, turned mutteringly on the pillow and opened her unconscious eyes on the face of the stranger.

"See!" said the Indian. "She looks at you."

"Ah! Great God!" muttered the other and staggered back out of the range of the wide-open eyes.

Lyster, puzzled, astonished, came forward to question his Eastern friend, who pushed past him rudely, blindly, and made his way out into the sunshine.

Akkomi looked after him with a gratified expression on his dark, wrinkled old face, and bending over the girl, he muttered in a soothing way words in the Indian tongue, as though to quiet her restlessness with Indian witchery.

CHAPTER XV.

SOMETHING WORSE THAN A GOLD CRISIS.

"What is the matter with your friend?" asked Overton, as Lyster stood staring after Mr. Haydon, who walked alone down the way they had come from the boats. "Is one glimpse of our camp life enough to drive him to the river again?"

"No, no--that is--well, I don't just know what ails him," confessed Lyster, rather lamely. "He went in with me to see 'Tana, and seems all upset by the sight of her. She does look very low, Dan. At home he has a daughter about her age, who really resembles her a little--as he does--a girl he thinks the world of. Maybe that had something to do with his feelings. I don't know, though; never imagined he was so impressionable to other people's misfortunes. And that satanic-looking old Indian helped make things uncomfortable for him."

"Who--Akkomi?"

"Oh, that is Akkomi, is it? The old chief who was too indisposed to receive me when I awaited admittance to his royal presence! Humph! Well, he seemed lively enough a minute ago--said something to Haydon that nearly gave him fits; and then, as if satisfied with his deviltry, he collapsed into the folds of his blanket again, and looks bland and innocent as a spring lamb at the present speaking. Is he grand chamberlain of your establishment here? Or is he a medicine man you depend on to cure 'Tana?"

"Akkomi said something to Mr. Haydon?" asked Overton, incredulously. "Nonsense! It could not have been anything Haydon would understand, anyway, for Akkomi does not speak English."

Lyster looked at him from the corner of his eyes, and whistled rather rudely.

"Now, it is not necessary for any reason whatever, for you to hide the accomplishments of your noble red friend," he remarked. "You are either trying to gull me, or Akkomi is trying to gull you--which is it?"

"What do you mean?" demanded Overton, impatiently. "You look as though there may be a grain of sense in the immense amount of fool stuff you are talking. Akkomi, maybe, understands English a little when it is spoken; but, like many another Indian who does the same, he will not speak it. I have known him for two years, in his own camp and on the trail, and I have never yet heard him use English words."

"Well, I have not had the felicity of even a two-hour acquaintance with his royal chieftainship," remarked Lyster, "but during the limited space of time I have been allowed to gaze on him I am confident I heard him use five English words, and use them very naturally."

"Can you tell me what they were?"