That Girl Montana
"It is not far," he answered. "Will you come, Lyster?"
"No!" said 'Tana; "you stay with the others, Max. Don't look vexed. Maybe
I can be of some use, and that is what I need."
Many heads turned to look at the girl whose laces were so elegant, and
whose beautiful face wore such a startled, questioning expression. But she
hurried out of their sight, and gave a little nervous shiver as she
wrapped her white velvet cloak close about her and sank into a corner of
the carriage.
"Are you cold?" Harvey asked, but she shook her head.
"No. But tell me all."
"There is not much. I was with a doctor--a friend of mine--who was called
in to see her. She recognized me. It is the little variety actress who
came over the Great Northern, on our train."
"Oh! But how could she know me?"
"She did not know your name; she only described you, remembering that I
had talked with you and your friends. When I told her you were in the
city, she begged so for you to come that I could not refuse to try."
"You did right," she answered. "But it is very strange--very strange."
Then the carriage stopped before a dingy house in a row that had once
belonged to a very fashionable quarter, but that was long ago. Boarding
houses they were now, and their class was about number three.
"It is a horrible place to bring you to, Miss Rivers," confessed her
guide; "and I am really glad Miss Seldon did not accompany you, for she
never would have forgiven either of us. But I knew you would not be
afraid."
"No, I am not afraid. But, oh, why don't they hurry?"
He had to ring the bell the second time ere any one came to the door.
Then, as the harsh jangle died away, steps were heard descending the
stairs, and a man without a coat and with a pipe in his mouth, shot back
the bolt with much grumbling.
"I'll cut the blasted wire if some one in the shebang don't tend to this
door better," he growled to a lady with a mug of beer, who just then
emerged from the lower regions. "Me a-trying to get the lines of that new
afterpiece in my head--chock-full of business, too!--and that bell
clanging forever right under my room. I'll move!"
"I wish you would," remarked Harvey, when the door opened at last. "Move a
little faster when you do condescend to open the door. Come, Miss
Rivers--up this way."
And the lady of the beer mug and the gentleman of the pipe stared at each
other, and at the white vision of girlhood going up the dark, bad-smelling
stairway.
"Well, that's a new sort in this castle," remarked the man. "Do you guess
the riddle of it?"
The woman did not answer, but listened to the footsteps as they went along
the hall. Then a door opened and shut.
"They've gone to Goldie's room," she said. "That's queer. Goldie ain't the
sort to have very high-toned friends, so it can't be a long-lost sister,"
and she smiled contemptuously.
"She's a beauty, anyway, and I'm going to see her when she makes her exit,
if I have to sit up all night."
"Oh! And what about the afterpiece?"
"To the devil with the afterpiece! It hasn't any angels in it."
Inside Goldie's room, a big Dutch blonde in a soiled blue wrapper sat by
the bed, and stared in open-mouthed surprise at the new-comers.
"Is it _you_ she's been askin' for?" she asked, bluntly.
But 'Tana did not reply, and Harvey got the blonde to the door, and
after a few whispered words, induced her to go out altogether, and closed
the door behind her.
"I thought you'd come," whispered the little woman on the bed. "I thought
the note would bring you. I saw you talk to him, and I dropped to the
game. You're square, too, ain't you? That's the kind I want now. That
swell who went for you is the right sort, too. I minded his face and
yours. But tell him to go out for a minute. It won't take long--to tell
you."
Harvey went, at a motion from 'Tana. She had not uttered a word yet. All
she could do was to stare in wonder at the wreck of a woman before her--a
painted wreck; for, even on her deathbed, the ghastly face was tinted with
rouge.
"I can't get well--doctor says," she continued. "There was a baby; it died
yesterday--three hours old; and I can't get well. But there is another one
I want to tell you of. You tell him. It is two years old. Here is the
address. Maybe he will take care of it for me. He was good-hearted--that's
why he married me; thought I was only a little girl without a home. Any
woman could fool him, for he thought all women were good. He thought I was
only a little girl; and I had been married three years before."
She smiled at the idea of that past deception, while 'Tana's face grew
hard and white.
"How you look!" said the dying woman. "Well, it's over now. He never cared
for me much, though--not so much as others did. He was never my real
husband, you know, for I never had a divorce. He thought he was, though;
and even after he left me, he sent me money regular for me to live quiet
in 'Frisco, but it didn't suit me. Then he got turned dead against me
when I tried to make him think the child was his. He wouldn't do
anything for me after that; I had cheated him once too often."
"And was it?" It was the first time 'Tana had spoken, and the woman
smiled.
"You care, too, do you? Well, yes, it was. You tell him so; tell him I
said so, and I was dying. He'll take care of her, I think. She's pretty,
but not like me. He never saw her. She's with a woman in Chicago, where I
boarded. I haven't paid her board now for months, but it's all right; the
woman's a good soul. Dan Overton will pay when you tell him."
"You write an order for that child, and tell the woman to give it to me,"
said 'Tana, decidedly, and looked around for something to write with. A
sheet of paper was found, and she went to Harvey for a pencil.
"'Most ready to go?" he asked, looking at her anxiously.
She nodded her head, and shut the door.
"But I can't write now; my hands are too weak," complained the woman. "I
can't."
"You've _got_ to!" answered the girl; and, taking her in her strong young
hands, she raised her up higher on the pillow. "There is the paper and
pencil--now write."
"It will kill me to lay like this."
"No matter if it does; you write."
"You're not a woman at all; you're like iron--white iron," whined the
other. "Any woman with a heart--" and the weak tears came in her eyes.
"No, I have no heart to be touched by you," answered the girl. "You had a
chance to live a decent life, and you wouldn't take it. You had an honest
man to trust you and take care of you, and you paid him with deceit.
Don't expect pity from me; but write that order."
She tried to write but could not, and the girl took the pencil.
"I will write it, and you can sign it," she said; "that will do as well."
Thus it was accomplished, and the woman was again laid lower in the bed.
"You are terrible hard on--on folks that ain't just square," she said.
"You needn't be so proud; you ain't dead yet yourself. You don't know what
may happen to you."
"I know," said the girl, coldly, "that if I ever brought children into the
world, to be thrown on strangers' hands and brought up in the streets to
live your sort of life, I would expect a very practical sort of hell
prepared for me. Have you anything more to tell me? I'm going."
"Oh--h! I wish you hadn't said that about hell. I'm dreadful afraid of
hell," moaned the woman.
"Yes," said the girl; "you ought to be."
"How hard you are! And the doctor said I would die to-night."
Then she lay still quite a while, and when she spoke again, her voice
seemed weaker.
"You have that order for Gracie, and you are so hard-hearted. I don't know
what you will do--and I don't want her to grow up like me."
"That is the first womanly thing I have heard you say," replied the girl.
She went over to the bed and took the woman's hands in hers, looking at
her earnestly.
"Your child shall have a beautiful and a good home," she said,
reassuringly. "I am going for her myself to-morrow, and she will never
lack care again. Have you any other word to give me?"
The woman shook her head, and then as 'Tana turned away, she said:
"Not unless you would kiss me. You are not like other women; but--will you
kiss me?"
And, with the pressure of the dying kiss on her lips, 'Tana went out the
door.
"Please give her every care money can secure for her," she said to the
woman at the door; while the man, minus the pipe, was there to open it.
"Mr. Harvey, can I trouble you to look after it for me? You know the
doctor and can learn all that is needed. Have the bills sent to me; and
let me know when it is all--over."
They reached the theater just as the curtain went down on the last act,
and she remained in the carriage until her own party came out.
"I can hardly thank you enough for coming after me to-night," she said, as
she shook hands very cordially with Harvey. "You can never be a mere
acquaintance to me again. You are my friend."
"Have I ignorantly done some good?" he asked, and she smiled at him.
"Yes--more than you know--more than I can tell you."
"Then may I hope not to be forgotten when you are in Italy?"
"Oh!" and the color flushed over all the pallor caught from that deathbed.
"But I--I don't think I will go to Italy after all, Mr. Harvey. I have
changed my mind about that, and think I will go back to the Kootenai hills
instead."
CHAPTER XXVII.
LIFE AT TWIN SPRINGS.
Over all the land of the Kootenai the sun of early June was shining. Trees
of wild fruits were white with blossoms, as if from far above on the
mountains the snows had blown down and settled here and there on the new
twigs of green.
And high up above the camp of the Twin Springs, Overton and Harris sat
looking over the wide stretches of forest, and the younger man looked
troubled.
"I think your fear is all an empty affair," he said, in an argumentative
tone. "You eat well and sleep well. What gives you the idea you are to be
called in soon?"
"Several things," said the other, slowly, and his speech was yet
indistinct; "but most of all the feel of my feet and legs. A week ago my
feet turned cold; this week the coldness is up to my knees, and it won't
go away. I know what it means. When it gets as high as my heart I'll be
done for. That won't take long, Dan; and I want to see her first."
"She can't help you."
"Yes, she can, too. You don't know. Dan, send for her."
"Things are all different with her now," protested the other. "She's with
friends who are not of the diggings or the ranges, Joe. She is going to
marry Max Lyster; and, altogether, is not the same little girl who made
our coffee for us down there in the flat. You must not expect that she
will change all her new, happy life to run back here just because you want
to talk to her."
"She'll come if you telegraph I want her," insisted Harris. "I know her
better than you do, Dan. The fine life will never spoil her. She would be
happier here to-day in a canoe than she would be on a throne. I know her
best."
"She wasn't very happy before she left here."
"No," he agreed; "but there were reasons, Dan. Why are you so set against
her coming back?"
"Set against it? Oh, no."
"Yes, you are. Mrs. Huzzard and all the camp would be only too glad to see
her; but you--you say no. What's your reason?"
"Joe, not many months ago you tried to make me suspicious of her," said
Overton, not moving his eyes from a distant blue peak of the hills. "You
remember the day you fell in a heap? Well, I've never asked you your
reasons for that; though I've thought of it considerably. You changed your
mind about her afterward, and trusted her with the plan of this gold field
down here. Now, you had reasons for that, too; but I never have asked you
what they are. Do the same for me, will you?"