That Girl Montana
"'Tana, it is now two suns since we talked. Will you go to-day in my boat
for a little ways?"
"No," she said, angrily. "Go home to your tepee, Akkomi, and tell the man
there I am sorry he is not dead. I never will see him again. I go away
from this place now--very soon--maybe this week. What becomes of him I do
not care, and it will be long before I come back."
He muttered some words of regret, and she turned to him more kindly.
"Yes, I know, Akkomi, you are my good friend. You think it is right to do
what you are doing now. Maybe it is; maybe I am wrong. But I will not be
different in this matter--never--never!"
"If he should come here--"
"He would not dare. There are people here he had better fear. Give him the
names of Seldon and of Haydon."
"He knows; but it is the new miners he fears most; they come from all
parts. He wants money."
"Let him work for it, like an honest man," she said, curtly. "Don't talk
of it again. I will not go outside the camp alone, and I will not listen
to any more words about it. Now mind that!"
In the other cabin, Harris listened intently to each word uttered. His
eyes fairly blazed in his eagerness to hear 'Tana's final decision. But
when Akkomi slouched past his door, and peered in, with his sharp, quick
eyes, he had relapsed again into the apathetic state habitual to him. To
all appearances he had not heard their words, and the old Indian walked
thoughtfully past the tents and out into the timber.
Lyster called some light greeting to him, but he barely looked up and made
no reply whatever. His thoughts were evidently on other things than camp
sociabilities.
It was dark when he returned, and his fit of thoughtfulness was yet upon
him, for he spoke to no one. Overton, who had been talking to Harris,
noticed him smoking beside the door as he came out.
"You had better bring your camp down here," he remarked, ironically.
"Well, for to-night you will have to spread your blanket in this room if
Harris doesn't object. That is what I am to do, for I've given up my
quarters to the ladies, who are afraid of snakes."
Akkomi nodded, and then Overton moved nearer the door again.
"Jim, I may not be back for an hour or so. I am going either on the water
or up on the mountain for a little while. Don't lie awake for me, and I'll
send a fellow in to look after you."
Harris nodded, and 'Tana, in her own room, heard Overton's steps die away
in the night. He was going on the water or on the mountains--the places
she loved to go, and dared not.
She felt like calling after him to wait to take her with him once more,
and did rise and go to the door, but no farther.
Lights were gleaming all along the little stream; laughter and men's
voices came to her across the level. Her own corner of the camp looked
very dark and shadowy in comparison. But she turned back to it with a
sigh.
"You may go, Flap-Jacks," she said to the squaw. "I don't mind being
alone, but first fix the bed of Harris."
She noticed Akkomi outside the door, but did not speak to him. She heard
the miner enter the other cabin and assist Harris to his couch and then
depart. She wondered a little that the old Indian still sat there smoking,
instead of spreading his blanket, as Overton had invited him to do.
A book of poems, presented to her by Lyster, was so engrossing, however,
that she forgot the old fellow, until a movement at the door aroused her,
and she turned to find the silent smoker inside her cabin.
But it was not Akkomi, though it was the cloak of Akkomi that fell from
his shoulders.
It was a man dressed as an Indian, but his speech was the speech of a
white man, as he frowned on her white, startled face.
"So, my fine lady, I've found you at last, even if you have got too high
and mighty to come when I sent for you," he said, growlingly. "But I'll
change your tune very quick for you."
"Don't forget that I can change yours," she retorted. "A word from me, and
you know there is not a man in this camp wouldn't help land you where you
belong--in a prison, or at the end of a rope."
"Oh, no," and he grimaced in a sardonic way. "I'm not a bit afraid of
that--not a bit in the world. You can't afford it. These high-toned
friends you've been making might drop off a little if they heard your old
record."
"And who made it for me?" she demanded. "You! You've been a curse to every
one connected with you. In that other room is a man who might be strong
and well to-day but for you. And there is that girl buried over there by
the picture rocks of Arrow Lake. Think of my mother, dragged to death
through the slums of 'Frisco! And me--"
"And you with a gold mine, or the price of one," he concluded--"plenty of
money and plenty of friends. That is about the facts of your
case--friends, from millionaires down to that digger I saw you with the
other night."
"Don't you dare say a word against him!" she exclaimed, threateningly.
"Oh, that's the way the land lies, is it?" he asked, with an ugly leer at
her. "And that is why you were playing 'meet me by moonlight alone,' that
night when I saw you together at the spring. Well, I think your money
might help you to some one besides a married man."
"A married man?" she gasped. "Dan!"
"Dan, it is," he answered, insolently. "But you needn't faint away on that
account. I have other use for you--I want some money."
"You are telling that lie about him because you think it will trouble me,"
she said, regarding his painted face closely and giving no heed to his
demand. "You know it is not true."
"About the marriage? I'll swear--"
"I would not believe your oath for anything."
"Oh, you wouldn't? Well, now, what if I prove to you, right in this camp,
that I know his wife?"
"His wife?" She sat down on the side of the couch, and all the cabin
seemed whirling around her.
"Well--a girl he married. You may call her what you please. She had been
called a good many things before he picked her up. Humph! Now that he has
struck it rich, some one ought to let her know. She'd make the dollars
fly."
"It is not true! It is not _true_!" she murmured to herself, as if by the
words she could drive away the possibility of it.
He appeared to enjoy the sensation he had created.
"It is true," he answered--"every word of it, and he has been keeping
quiet about it, has he? Well, see here. You don't believe me--do you? Now,
while I was waiting there at the door, a man came in to put your paralyzed
partner to bed. The man was Jake Emmons--used to hang out at Spokane. He
knew Lottie Snyder before this Overton did--and after Overton married her,
too, I guess. You ask him anything you want to know of it. He can tell
you--if he will."
She did not answer. She feared, as he talked, that it was true; and she
longed for him to go away, that she could think alone. The hot blood
burned in her cheeks, as she remembered that night by the Twin Springs.
The humiliation of it, if it proved true!
"But, see here, 'Tana. I didn't come here to talk about your virtuous
ranger. I want some money--enough to cut the country. It ain't any more
than fair, anyway, that you divide with me, for if it hadn't been for that
sneaking hound in the other room, half of this find would have been mine a
year ago."
"It will do more good where it is," she answered. "He did right not to
trust you. And if he were able to walk, you would not be allowed to live
many minutes within reach of him."
"Oh, yes; I know he was trailing me," he answered, indifferently, "but it
was no hard trick to keep out of his road. I suppose you let him know you
approve of his feelings toward me."
"Yes, I would load a gun for him to use on you if he were able to hold
it," she answered, and he seemed to think her words amusing.
"You have mighty little regard for your duty to me," he observed.
"Duty? I can't owe you any duty when I never received any from you. I am
nearly seventeen, and in all the years I remember you, I can't recall any
good act you have ever done for me."
"Nearly seventeen," and he smiled at her in the way she hated. "Didn't
your new uncle, Haydon, tell you better than that? You are nearly eighteen
years old."
"Eighteen!" and she rose in astonishment. "I?"
"You--though you don't look it. You always were small for your age, so I
just told you a white lie about it in order to manage you better. But that
is over; I don't care what you do in the future. All I want of you is
money to get to South America; so fix it up for me."
"I ought to refuse, and call them in to arrest you."
"But you won't," he rejoined. "You can't afford it."
He watched her, though, with some uncertainty, as she sat silent,
thinking.
"No, I can't afford it," she said, at last. "I will be doing wrong to help
you, just as if I let a poison snake loose where people travel--for that
is what you are. But I am not strong enough to let these friends go and
start over again; so I will help you away this once."
He drew a breath of relief, and gathered up his blanket.
"That is the way to talk. You've got a level head--"
"That will do," she said, curtly. "I don't want praise from a coward, a
thief, or a murderer. You are all three. I have no money here. You will
have to come again for it to-morrow night."
"A trick--is it?"
"It is no trick. I haven't got it, that is all. Maybe I can't get it in
money, but I will get it in free gold by to-morrow at dusk. I will put it
here under the pillow, and will manage to keep the rest away at that time.
You can come as you came this evening, and get it; but I will neither take
it nor send it to you. You will have to risk your freedom and your life to
come for it. But while I can't quite decide to give you up or to kill you,
myself, I hope some one else will."
"Hope what you please," he returned, indifferently. "So long as you get
the dust for me, I can stand your opinion. And you will have it here?"
"I will have it here."
"I trust you only because I know you can't afford to go back on me," he
said, as he wrapped the blanket around him, and dropped his taller form to
the height of Akkomi. "It is a bargain, then, my dear. Good-night."
"I don't wish you a good-night," she answered. "I hope I shall never see
you alive again."
And she never did.
CHAPTER XX.
'TANA'S ENGAGEMENT
"And she wants a thousand dollars in money or free gold--a thousand
dollars to-day?"
"No use asking me what for, Dan, for I don't know," confessed Lyster. "I
can't see why she don't tell you herself; but you know she has been a
little queer since the fever--childish, whimsical, and all that. Maybe as
she has not yet handled any specie from your bonanza, she wants some only
to play with, and assure herself it is real."
"Less than a thousand in money and dust would do for a plaything,"
remarked Overton. "Of course she has a right to get what she wants; but
that amount will be of no use to her here in camp, where there is not a
thing in the world to spend it for."
"Maybe she wants to pension off some of her Indian friends before she
leaves," suggested Max--"old Akkomi and Flap-Jacks, perhaps. I am a little
like Miss Slocum in my wonder as to how she endures them, though, of
course, the squaw is a necessity."
"Oh, well, she was not brought up in the world of Miss Slocum--or your
world, either," answered Overton. "You should make allowance for that."
"Make allowance--I?" and Lyster looked at him curiously. "Are you trying
to justify her to me? Why, man, you ought to know by this time what keeps
me here a regular lounger around camp, and there is no need to make
excuses for her to me. I thought you knew."
"You mean you--like her?"
"Worse than that," said Max, with his cheery, confident smile. "I'm trying
to get her to say she likes me."
"And she?"