That Girl Montana
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