That Girl Montana
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