That Girl Montana
changed, 'Tana was changed, and now the captain seemed unlike himself from
the very moment of his arrival. Even Lavina was a bit curt and
indifferent, and Lorena Jane wondered where it would end.
In the midst of her perplexity, 'Tana added to it by appearing before her
in the Indian dress Overton had presented her with. Since her sickness it
had hung unused in her cabin, and the two women had fashioned garments
more suitable, they thought, to a young girl who could wear real laces now
if she chose. But there she was again, dressed like any little squaw, and
although rather pale to suit the outfit, she said she wanted a few more
"Indian hours" before departing for the far-off Eastern city that was to
her as a new world.
She received Captain Leek with an unconcern that was discouraging to the
pretty speeches he had prepared to utter.
Dan returned and looked sharply at her as she sat whittling a stick of
which she said she meant to make a cane--a staff for mountain climbing.
"Where do you intend climbing?" he asked.
She waved the stick toward the hill back of them, the first step of the
mountain.
"It is only a few hours since I picked you up down there, looking as if
you were dead," he said, impatiently; "and you know you are not fit to
tramp."
"Well, I'm not dead yet, anyway," she answered, with a shrug of her
shoulders; "and as I'm going to break away from this camp about to-morrow,
I thought I'd like to see a bit of the woods first."
"You--are going--to-morrow?"
"I reckon so."
"'Tana! And you have not said a word to me of it? That was not very
friendly, little girl."
She did not reply, but bent her head low over her work.
After observing her for a while in silence, he arose and put on his hat.
"Here is my knife," he remarked. "You had better use it, if you are
determined to haggle at that stick. Your own knife is too dull for any
use. You can leave it here in the cabin when you are done with it."
She accepted it without a word, but flushed red when he had gone, and she
found the eyes of Harris regarding her sadly.
"'Not very friendly,'" she said, going over Overton's words--"you think
that, too--don't you? You think I'm ugly, and saucy, and awful, I know!
You look scoldings at me; but if you knew all, maybe you wouldn't--if you
knew that my heart is just about breaking. I'm going out where there is no
one to talk to, or I'll be crying next."
The two cousins and the captain were in 'Tana's cabin. Mrs. Huzzard was
determined that Miss Slocum and the captain should become acquainted, and,
getting sight of the girl, who was walking alone across the level, she at
once followed her, thinking that the two left behind would perhaps become
more social if left entirely to themselves. And they did; that is, they
talked, and the captain spoke first.
"So you--you bear a grudge--don't you, Lavina?"
"Well, I guess if I owed you a very heavy one, I've got a good chance to
pay it off now," she remarked, grimly.
He twirled his hat in a dejected way, and did not speak.
"You an officer in the Union Army?" she continued, derisively. "You a
pattern of what a gentleman should be; you to set up as superior to these
rough-handed miners; you to act as if this Government owes you a pension!
Why, how would it be with you, Alf Leek, if I'd tell this camp the truth
of how you went away, engaged to me, twenty-five years ago, and never let
me set eyes on you since--of how I wore black for you, thinking you were
killed in the war, till I heard that you had deserted. I took off that
mourning quick, I can tell you! I thought you were fighting on the wrong
side; yet if you had a good reason for being there, you should have staid
and fought so long as there was breath in you. And if I was to tell them
here that you haven't a particle of right to wear that blue suit that
looks like a uniform, and that you were no more 'captain' of anything than
I am--well, I guess Lorena Jane wouldn't have much to say to you, though
maybe Mr. Overton would."
He grew actually pale as he listened. His fear of some one overhearing her
was as great as his own mortification.
"But you--you won't tell--will you, Lavina?" he said pleadingly. "I
haven't done any harm! I--"
"Harm! Alf Leek, you never had enough backbone to do either harm or help
to any one in this world. But don't you suppose you did me harm when you
spoiled me for ever trusting any other man?"
"I--I would have come back, but I thought you'd be married," he said, in a
feeble, hopeless way.
"Likely that is now, ain't it?" she demanded. And, woman-like, now that
she had reduced him to meekness and humiliation, she grew a shade less
severe, as if pretty well satisfied. "I had other things to think of
besides a husband."
"You won't tell--will you, Lavina? I'll tell you how it all happened, some
day. Then I'll leave this country."
"You'll not," she contradicted. "You'll stay right here as long as I do,
and I won't tell just so long as you keep from trying to make Lorena Jane
believe how great you are. But at the first word of your heroic actions,
or the cultured society you were always used to--"
"You'll never hear of them," he said eagerly, "never. I knew you wouldn't
make trouble, Lavina, for you always were such a good, kind-hearted
girl."
He offered his hand to her, sheepishly, and she gave it a vixenish slap.
"Don't try any of your skim-milk praise on me," she said, tartly. "Huh!
You, that Lorena thought was a pillar of cultured society! When, the Lord
knows, you wouldn't have known how to read the addresses on your own
letters if I hadn't taught you!"
He moved to the door in a crestfallen manner, and stood there a moment,
moistening his lips, and apparently swallowing words that could not be
uttered.
"That's so, Lavina," he said, at last, and went out.
"There!" she muttered aggrievedly--"that's Alf Leek, just as he always
was. Give him a chance, and he'd ride over any one; but get the upper hand
of him, and he is meeker than Moses. Not that much meekness is needed to
come up to Moses, either." Then, after an impatient tattoo, she
exclaimed:
"Gracious me! I do wish he hadn't looked so crushed, and had talked back a
little."
CHAPTER XXII.
THE MURDER.
That evening, as the dusk fell, a slight figure in an Indian dress slipped
to the low brush back of the cabin, and thence to the uplands.
It was 'Tana, ready to endure all the wilds of the woods, rather than stay
there and meet again the man she had met the night before. She had sent
the squaw away; she had arranged in Mrs. Huzzard's tent a little game of
cards that would hold the attention of Lyster and the others; and then she
had slipped away, that she might, for just once more, feel free on the
mountain, as she had felt when they first located their camp in the sweet
grass of the Twin Springs.
The moon would be up after a while. She could not walk far, but she meant
to sit somewhere up there in the high ground until the moon should roll up
over the far mountains.
The mere wearing of the Indian dress gave her a feeling of being herself
once more, for in the pretty conventional dress made for her by Mrs.
Huzzard, she felt like another girl--a girl she did not know very well.
In the southwest long streaks of red and yellow lay across the sky, and a
clear radiance filled the air, as it does when a new moon is born after
the darkness. She felt the beauty of it all, and stretched out her arms as
though to draw the peaks of the hills to her.
But, as she stepped forward, a form arose before her--a tall, decided
form, and a decided voice said:
"No, 'Tana, you have gone far enough."
"Dan!"
"Yes--it is Dan this time, and not the other fellow. If he is waiting for
you to-night, I will see that he waits a long time."
"You--you!" she murmured, and stepped back from him. Then, her first
fright over, she straightened herself defiantly.
"Why do you think any one is waiting for me?" she demanded. "What do you
know? I am heartsick with all this hiding, and--and deceit. If you know
the truth, speak out, and end it all!"
"I can't say any more than you know already," he answered--"not so much;
but last night a man was in your cabin, a man you know and quarreled with.
I didn't hear you; don't think I was spying on you. A miner who passed the
cabin heard your voices and told me something was wrong. You don't give me
any right to advise you or dictate to you, 'Tana, but one thing you shall
not do, that is, steal to the woods to meet him. And if I find him in your
cabin, I promise you he sha'n't die of old age."
"You would kill him?"
"Like a snake!" and his voice was harsher, colder, than she had ever heard
it. "I'm not asking you any questions, 'Tana. I know it was the man whom
you--saw that night at the spring, and would not let me follow. I know
there is something wrong, or he would come to see you, like a man, in
daylight. If the others here knew it, they would say things not kind to
you. And that is why it sha'n't go on."
"Sha'n't? What right have you--to--to--"
"You will say none," he answered, curtly, "because you do not know."
"Do not know what?" she interrupted, but he only drew a deep breath and
shook his head.
"Tana, don't meet this man again," he said, pleadingly. "Trust me to judge
for you. I don't want to be harsh with you. I don't want you to go away
with hard thoughts against me. But this has got to stop--you must promise
me."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I'd look for the man, and he never would meet you again."
A little shiver ran over her as he spoke. She knew what he meant, and,
despite her bitter words last night to her visitor, the thought was
horrible to her that Dan--
She covered her face with her hands and turned away.
"Don't do that, little girl," he said, and laid his hand on her arm.
"'Tana!"
She flung off his hand as though it stung her, and into her mind flashed
remembrance of Jake Emmons from Spokane--of him and his words.
"Don't touch me!" she half sobbed. "Don't you say another word to me! I am
going away to-morrow, and I have promised to marry Max Lyster."
His hand dropped to his side, and his face shone white in the wan glimmer
of the stars.
"You have promised that?" he said, at last, drawing his breath hard
through his shut teeth. "Well--it is right, I suppose--right. Come! I will
take you back to him now. He is the best one to guard you. Come!"
She drew away and looked from him across to where the merest rim of the
rising moon was to be seen across the hills. The thought of that other
night came to her, the night when they had stood close to each other in
the moonlight. How happy she had been for that one little space of time!
And now--Ah! she scarcely dare allow him to speak kindly to her, lest she
grow weak enough to long for that blind content once more.
"Come, Tana."
"Go. I will follow after a little," she answered, without turning her
head.
"I may never trouble you to walk with you again," he said, in a low,
constrained tone; "but this time I must see you safe in the tent before I
leave."
"Leave! Going! Where to?" she asked, and her voice trembled in spite of
herself. She clasped her hands tightly, and he could see the flash of the
ring he had given her. She had put it on with the Indian dress.
"That does not matter much, does it?" he returned; "but somewhere, far
enough up the lake not to trouble you again while you stay. Come."
She walked beside him without another word; words seemed so useless. She
had said words over and over again to herself all that day--words of his
wrong to her in not telling her of that other woman, words of reproach,
bitter and keen; yet none of her reasoning kept her from wanting to touch
his hand as he walked beside her.