That Girl Montana
"Only a moment!" he said, pleadingly. "It never can be that--that I would
be anything to you, little girl--never, never! But--just once--let me tell
you a truth that shall never hurt you, I swear! I love you! No other word
but that will tell your dearness to me. I--I never would have said it,
but--but what you risked for me has broken me down. It has told me more
than your words would tell me, and I--Oh, God! my God!"
She shrank from the passion in his words and tone, but the movement only
made him catch her arm and hold her there. Tears were in his eyes as he
looked at her, and his jaws were set firmly.
"You are afraid of me--of me?" he asked. "Don't be. Life will be hard
enough now without leaving me that to remember. I'm not asking a word in
return from you; I have no right. You will be happy somewhere else--and
with some one else--and that is right."
He still held her wrist, and they stood in silence. She could utter no
word; but her mouth trembled and she tried to smother a sob that arose in
her throat.
But he heard it.
"Don't!" he said, almost in a whisper--"for God's sake, don't cry. I can't
stand that--not your tears. Here! be brave! Look up at me, won't you? See!
I don't ask you for a word or a kiss or a thought when you leave me--only
let me see your eyes! Look at me!"
What he read in her trembling lips and her shrinking, shamed eyes made him
draw his breath hard through his shut teeth.
"My brave little girl!" he said softly. "You will think harshly of me for
this some day--if you ever know--know all. But what you did this morning
made a coward of me--that and my longing for you. Try to forgive me. Or,
no--you had better not. And when you are his wife--Oh, it's no use--I
can't think or speak of that--yet. Good-by, little girl--good-by!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
LEAVING CAMP.
Afterward, 'Tana never could remember clearly the incidents of the few
days that followed. Only once more she entered the cabin of death, and
that was when Mr. Haydon and Mr. Seldon returned with all haste to the
camp, after meeting with Captain Leek and the Indian boatman.
Then, as some of the men offered to go with them to view the remains of
the outlaw, she came forward.
"No. I will take them," she said.
When Mr. Haydon demurred, feeling that a young girl should be kept as much
as possible from such scenes, she had laid her hand on Seldon's arm.
"Come!" she said, and they went with her.
But when inside the door, she did not approach the blanket-covered form
stretched on the couch; only pointed toward it, and stood herself like a
guard at the entrance.
When Seldon lifted the Indian blanket from the face, he uttered a startled
exclamation, and looked strangely at her. She never turned around.
"What is it?" asked Mr. Haydon.
No one replied, and as he looked with anxiety toward the form there, his
face grew ashen in its horror.
"Lord in heaven!" he gasped; "first her on that bed and now _him_! I--I
feel as if I was haunted in this camp. Seldon, is it--is it--"
"No mistake possible," answered the other man, decidedly. "I could swear
to the identity. It is George Rankin!"
"And Holly, the renegade!" added Haydon, in consternation; "and Lord only
knows how many other aliases he has worn. Oh, what a sensation the papers
would make over this if they got hold of it all. My! my! it would be
awful! And that girl, Montana, as she calls herself, she has been clever
to keep it quiet as she has, for--Oh, Lord!"
"What is the matter now? You look fairly sick," said the other,
impatiently. "I didn't fancy you'd grieve much over his death."
"No, it isn't that," said Haydon, huskily. "But that girl--don't you see
she was accused of this? And--well seeing who he is, how do we know--"
He stopped awkwardly, unable to continue with the girl herself so near and
with Seldon's warning glance directed to him.
She leaned against the wall, and apparently had not heard their words.
Seldon's face softened as he looked at her; and, going over, he put his
hand kindly on her hair.
"I am going to be your uncle, now," he said in a caressing tone. "You have
kept up like a soldier under some terrible things here; but we will try to
make things brighter for you now."
She smiled in a dreary way without looking at him. His knowledge of the
terrible things she had endured seemed to her very limited.
"And you will go now with us--with Mr. Haydon--back to your mother's old
home, won't you?" he said, in a persuasive way. "It is not good, you know,
for a little girl not to know any of her relations, or to bear such
shocking grudges," he added, in a lower tone.
But she gave him no answering smile.
"I will go to your house if you will have me," she said. "You and Max are
my friends. I will go only with people I like."
"You know, my dear," said Mr. Haydon, who heard her last words. "You know
I offered you a home in my house until such time as you got to school,
and--and of course, I'll stick to it."
"Though you are a little afraid to risk it, aren't you?" she asked, with
an unpleasant smile. "Haven't you an idea that I might murder you all in
your beds some fine night? You know I belong to a country where they do
such things for pastime. Aren't you afraid?"
"That is a very horrible sort of pleasantry," he answered, and moved away
from the dead face he had been staring at. "I beg you will not indulge in
it, especially when you move in a society more refined than these mining
camps can afford. It will be a disadvantage to you if you carry with you
customs and memories of this unfinished section. And after all, you do not
belong here, your family was of the East. When you go back there, it would
be policy for you to forget that you had ever lived anywhere else."
Mr. Haydon had never made so long a speech to her before, and it was
delivered with a certain persistence, as if it was a matter of conscience
he would be relieved to have off his mind.
"I think you are mistaken when you say I do not belong here," she
answered, coolly. "Some of my family have been a good many things I
don't intend to be. I was born in Montana; and I might have starved to
death for any help my 'family' would have given me, if I hadn't struck
luck and helped myself here in Idaho. So I think I belong out here, and if
I live, I will come back again--some day."
She turned to Seldon and pointed to the dead form.
"They will take him away to-day--I heard them say so," she said quietly.
"Let it be somewhere away from the camp--not near--not where I can see."
"Can't you forget--even now, 'Tana?"
"Does anybody ever forget?" she asked. "When people say they can forget
and forgive, I don't trust them, for I don't believe them."
"Have you any idea who killed him?" he asked. "It is certainly a strange
affair. I thought you might suspect some one these people know nothing
of."
But she shook her head. "No," she said. "There were several who would have
liked to do it, I suppose--people he had wronged or ruined; for he had few
friends left, or he would not have come across to these poor reds to hide.
Give old Akkomi part of that gold; he was faithful to me--and to him, too.
No, I don't know who did it. I don't care, now. I thought I knew once; but
I was wrong. This way of dying is better than the rope; and that is what
the law would have given him. He would have chosen this--I know."
"Did you ever in your life hear such cold-blooded words from a girl?"
demanded Haydon, when she left them and went to Harris. "Afraid of her?
Humph! Well, some people would be. No wonder they suspected her when she
showed such indifference. Every word she says makes me regret more and
more that I acknowledged her. But how was I to know? She was ill, and
made me feel as if a ghost had come before me. I couldn't sleep till I had
made up my mind to take the risk of her. Max sung her praises as if she
was some rare untrained genius. Nothing gave me an idea that she would
turn out this way."
"'This way' has not damaged you much so far," remarked Mr. Seldon, dryly.
"And as she is not likely to be much of a charge on your hands, you had
better not borrow trouble on that score."
"All very well--all very well for you to be indifferent," returned Mr.
Haydon, with some impatience. "You have no family to consider, no matter
what wild escapade she would be guilty of, you would not be touched by the
disgrace of it, because she doesn't belong in any way to your family."
"Maybe she will, though," suggested Seldon.
Mr. Haydon shrugged his shoulders significantly.
"You mean through Max, don't you?" he asked. "Yes, I was simple enough to
build on that myself--thought what a nice, quiet way it would be of
arranging the whole affair; but after a talk with this ranger, Overton,
whom you and Max unite in admiring, I concluded he might be in the way."
"Overton? Nonsense!"
"Well, maybe; but he made himself very autocratic when I attempted to
discuss her future. He seemed to show a good deal of authority concerning
her affairs."
"Not a bit more than he does over the affairs of their paralyzed partner
in there," answered Seldon. "If she always makes as square friends as Dan
Overton, I shan't quarrel with her judgment."
When 'Tana left them and went into the other cabin, she stood looking at
Harris a long time in a curious, scrutinizing way, and his face changed
from doubt to dread before she spoke.
"I am hardly able to think any more, Joe," she said at last, and her tired
eyes accented the truth of her words; "but something like a thought keeps
hammering in my head about you--about you and--" She pointed to the next
room. "If you could walk, I should know you did it. If you could talk, I
should know you had it done. I wouldn't tell on you; but I'd be glad I was
going where I would not see you, for I never could touch your hand again.
I am going away, Joe; won't you tell me true whether you know who did it?
Do you?"
He shook his head with his eyes closed. He, too, looked pale and worn, and
noticing it, she asked if he would not rather move to some other dwelling,
since--
He nodded his head with a sort of eagerness. All of the two days and the
night he had sat there, with only the folds of a blanket to separate him
from the room where his dead foe lay.
"I will speak to them about it right away." She lifted his hand and
stroked it with a sort of sympathy. "Joe, can you forgive him now?" she
whispered.
He made her no reply; only closed his eyes as before.
"You can't, then? and I can't ask you to, though I suppose I ought to.
Margaret would," and she smiled strangely. "You don't know Margaret, do
you? Well, neither do I. But I guess she is the sort of girl I ought to
be. Joe, I can't stay in camp any longer. Maybe I'll leave for the Ferry
to-day. Will you miss me? Yes, I know you will," she added, "and I will
miss you, too. Do you know--can you tell when Dan will come back?"
He shook his head, and an hour later she said to Max:
"Take me away from here, back to the Ferry--any place. Mrs. Huzzard will,
maybe, come for a few days--or Miss Slocum. Ask them, and let me go
soon."
And an hour after they had started, another canoe went slowly over the
water toward the Kootenai River, a canoe guided by Akkomi; and in it lay
the blanket-draped figure of the man whose death was yet a mystery to the
camp. He was at least borne to his resting place by a friend, though what
the reason for Akkomi's faithfulness, no one ever knew; for some favor in
the past, no doubt. Seldon knew that 'Tana would rather Akkomi should be
the one to cover his grave, though where it was made, no white man ever
knew.
CHAPTER XXV.
ON MANHATTAN ISLAND.
"What do you intend to make of your life, Montana, since you avoid all