That Girl Montana
yet it was this same summer.
"I feel as if I had lived a long time since I played with that clay," she
said, wistfully; "so many things have been made different for me."
Then she arose and walked about the little room restlessly, while the eyes
of Harris never left her. Into the other room she had not gone at all, for
in it was the dead stranger.
"When do you look for your uncle and Mr. Haydon?" she asked, at last, for
the silences were hardest to endure.
She would laugh, or argue, or ridicule--do anything rather than sit silent
with questioning eyes upon her. She even grew to fancy that Harris must
accuse her--he watched her so!
"When do we look for them? Well, I don't dare let myself decide. I only
hope they may have made a start back, and will meet the captain on his
way. As to Dan--he had not so very much the start, and they ought to catch
up with him, for there were the two Indian canoeists--the two best ones;
and when they are racing over the water, with an object, they surely ought
to make better time than he. I can't see that he had any very pressing
reason for going at all."
"He doesn't talk much about his reasons," she answered.
"No; that's a fact," he agreed, "and less of late than when I knew him
first. But he'll make Akkomi talk, maybe, when he arrives--and I hope you,
too."
"When he arrives!"
She thought the words, but did not say them aloud. She sat long after Max
had left her, and thought how many hours must elapse before they
discovered that Dan had not followed the other men to the lake works. She
felt sure that he was somewhere in the wilderness, avoiding the known
paths, alone, and perhaps hating her as the cause of his isolation,
because she would not confess what the man was to her, but left him
blindly to keep his threat, and kill him when found in her room.
Ah! why not have trusted him with the whole truth? She asked herself the
question as she sat there, but the mere thought of it made her face grow
hot, and her jaws set defiantly.
She would not--she could not! so she told herself. Better--better far be
suspected of a murder--live all her life under the blame of it for
him--than to tell him of a past that was dead to her now, a past she
hated, and from which she had determined to bar herself as far as silence
could build the wall. And to tell him--him--she could not.
But even as she sat, with her burning face in her hands, quick, heavy
steps came to the door, halted, and looking up she found Dan before her.
"Oh! you should not," she whispered, hurriedly. "Why did you come back?
They do not suspect; they think I did it--and so--"
"What does this all mean?--what do you mean?" he asked. "Can't you
speak?"
It seemed she could not find any more words, she stared at him so
helplessly.
"Max, come here!" he called, to hasten steps already approaching. "Come,
all of you; I had only a moment to listen to the captain when he caught up
with me. But he told me she is suspected of murder--that a ring she wore
last night helped the suspicion on. I didn't wait to hear any more, for I
gave the little girl that snake ring--gave it to her weeks ago. I bought
it from a miner, and he told me he got it from an Indian near Karlo. Now
are you ready to suspect me, too, because I had it first?"
"The ring wasn't just the most important bit of circumstantial evidence,
Mr. Overton," answered the man named Saunders; "and we are all mighty glad
you've got here. It was in her room the man was found, and a knife she
borrowed from you was what killed him; and of where she was just about the
time the thing happened she won't say anything."
His face paled slightly as he looked at her and heard the brief summing up
of the case.
"My knife?" he said, blankly.
"Yes, sir. When some one said it was your knife, she spoke up and said it
was, but that you had not had it since noon, for she borrowed it then to
cut a stick; but beyond that she don't tell a thing."
"Who is the man?"
"The renegade--Lee Holly."
"Lee Holly!" He turned a piercing glance on Harris, remembering the deep
interest he had shown in that man Lee Holly and his partner, "Monte."
Harris met his gaze without flinching, and nodded his head as if in
assent.
And that was the man found dead in her room!
The faces of the people seemed for a moment an indistinct blur before his
eyes; then he rallied and turned to her.
"'Tana, you never did it," he said, reassuringly; "or if you did, it has
been justifiable, and I know it. If it was necessary to do it in any
self-defense, don't be afraid to tell it all plainly. No one would blame
you. It is only this mystery that makes them want to hear the truth."
She only looked at him. Was he acting? Did he himself know nothing? The
hope that it was so--that she had deceived herself--made her tremble as
she had not at danger to herself. She had risen to her feet as he entered,
but she swayed as if to fall, and he caught her, not knowing it was hope
instead of despair that took the color from her face and left her
helpless.
"Courage, 'Tana! Tell us what you can. I left you just as the moon came
up. I saw you go to Mrs. Huzzard's tent. Now, where did you go after
that?"
"What?" almost shouted Lyster. "You were with her when the moon rose. Are
you sure?"
"Sure? Of course I am. Why?"
"And how long before that, Mr. Overton?" asked Saunders; "for that is a
very important point."
"About a half-hour, I should say--maybe a little more," he answered,
staring at them. "Now, what important thing does that prove?"
One of the men gave a cheer; three or four had come up to the door when
they saw Overton, and they took the yell up with a will. Mrs. Huzzard
started to run from the tent, but grew so nervous that she had to wait
until Miss Slocum came to her aid.
"What in the world does it mean?" she gasped.
Saunders turned around with an honestly pleased look.
"It means that Mr. Overton here has brought word that clears Miss Rivers
of being at the cabin when the murder was done--that's what it means; and
we are all too glad over it to keep quiet. But why in the world didn't you
tell us that, miss?"
But she did not say a word. All about Dan were exclamations and disjointed
sentences, from which he could gain little actual knowledge, and he turned
to Lyster, impatiently:
"Can't you tell me--can't some of you tell me, what I have cleared up for
her? When was this killing supposed to be done?"
"At or a little before moonrise," said Max, his face radiant once more.
"'Tana--don't you know what he has done for you? taken away all of that
horribly mistaken suspicion you let rest on you. Where was she, Dan?"
"Last night? Oh, up above the bluff there--went up when the pretty red
lights were in the sky, and staid until the moon rose. I came across her
up there, and advised her not to range away alone; so, when she got good
and ready, she walked back again, and went to the tent where you folks
were. Then I struck the creek, decided I would take a run up the lake, and
left without seeing any of you again. And all this time 'Tana has had a
guard over her. Some of you must have been crazy."
"Well, then, I guess I was the worst lunatic of the lot," confessed
Saunders. "But to tell the truth, Mr. Overton, it looks to me now as if
she encouraged suspicion--yes, it does. 'Overton's knife,' said some one;
but, quick as could be, she spoke up and said it was she who had it, and
she didn't mind just where she left it. And as to where she was at that
time, well, she just wouldn't give us a bit of satisfaction. Blest if I
don't think she wanted us to suspect her."
"Oh!" he breathed, as if in understanding, and her first words swept back
to him, her nervous--"Why did you come back? They suspect me!" Surely that
cry was as a plea for his own safety; it spoke through eyes and voice as
well as words. Some glimmer of the truth came to him.
"Come, 'Tana!" he said, and reached his hand to her. "Where is the
man--Holly? I should like to go in. Will you come, too?"
She rose without a word, and no one attempted to follow them.
Mrs. Huzzard heaved a prodigious sigh of content.
"Oh, that girl Montana!" she exclaimed. "I declare she ain't like any girl
I ever did see! This morning, when she was a suspected criminal, she was
talky, and even laughed, and now that she's cleared, she won't lift her
head to look at any one. I do wonder if that sort of queerness is catching
in these woods. I declare I feel most scared enough to leave."
But Lyster reassured her.
"Remember how sick she has been; and think what a shock this whole affair
has been to weak nerves," he said, for with Dan's revelations he had grown
blissfully content once more, "and as for that fellow hearing voices in
her cabin--nonsense! She had been reading some poem or play aloud. She is
fond of reading so, and does it remarkably well. He heard her spouting in
there for the benefit of Harris, and imagined she was making threats to
some one. Poor little girl! I'm determined she sha'n't remain here any
longer."
"Are you?" asked Mrs. Huzzard, dryly. "Well, Mr. Max, so long as I've
known her, I've always found 'Tana makes her own determinations--and
sticks to them, too."
"I'm glad to be reminded of that," he retorted, "for she promised me
yesterday to marry me some time."
"Bless my soul!"
"If she didn't change her mind," he added, laughingly.
"To marry you! Well, well, well!" and she stared at him so queerly, that a
shade of irritation crossed his face.
"Why not?" he asked. "Don't you think that a plain, ordinary man is good
enough for your wild-flower of the Kootenai hills?"
"Oh, you're not plain at all, Mr. Max Lyster," she returned, "and I'll go
bail many a woman who is smarter than either 'Tana or me has let you know
it! It ain't the plainness--it's the difference. And--well, well! you know
you've been quarreling ever since you met."
"But that is all over now," he promised; "and haven't you a good wish for
us?"
"Indeed I have, then--a many of them, but you have surprised me. I used to
think that's how it would end; and then--well, then, a different notion
got in my head. Now that it's settled, I do hope you will be happy. Bless
the child! I'll go and tell her so this minute."
"No," he said, quickly, "let her and Dan have their talk out--if she will
talk to him. That fever left her queer in some things, and one of them is
her avoidance of Dan. She hasn't been free and friendly with him as she
used to be, and it is too bad; for he is such a good fellow, and would do
anything for her."
"Yes, he would," assented Mrs. Huzzard.
"And she will be her own spirited self in a few weeks--when she gets away
from here--and gets stronger. She'll appreciate Dan more after a while,
for there are few like him. And so--as she is to go away so soon, I hope
something will put them on their former confidential footing. Maybe this
murder will be the something."
"You are a good friend, Mr. Max," said the woman, slowly, "and you deserve
to be a lucky lover. I'm sure I hope so."
Within the cabin, those two of whom they spoke stood together beside the
dead outlaw, and their words were low--so low that the paralyzed man in
the next room listened in vain.
"And you believed that of me--of me?" he asked, and she answered,
falteringly:
"How did I know? You said--you threatened--you would kill him--any man you
found in here. So, when he was here dead, I--did not know."
"And you thought I had stuck that knife in him and left?"
She nodded her head.
"And you thought," he continued, in a voice slightly tremulous, "that you
were giving me a chance to escape just so long as you let them
suspect--you?"
She did not answer, but turned toward the door. He held his arm out and
barred her way.