That Girl Montana
"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
_protegee_ 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 _protegee_ 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