That Girl Montana
The other man did not answer for a little while, but he watched Dan's
moody face with a great deal of kindness in his own.
"You won't tell me?" he said at last. "Well, that's all right. But one of
the reasons I want her back is to make clear to you all the unexplained
things of last summer. There were things you should have been told--that
would have made you two better friends, would have broken down the wall
there always seemed to be between you--or nearly always. (She wouldn't
tell you, and I couldn't.) It left her always under a cloud to you, and
she felt it. Many a time, Dan, she has knelt beside me and cried over her
troubles to me--and they were troubles, too!--telling them all to me just
because I couldn't speak and tell them again. And I won't, unless she lets
me. But I don't want to go over the range and know that you two, all your
lives, will be apart and cold to each other on account of suspicions I
could clear away."
"Suspicions? No, I have no suspicions against her."
"But you have had many a troubled hour because of that man found dead in
her room, and his visit to her the night before, and that money she asked
for that he was after. All such things that you could not clear her of in
your own mind, when you cleared her of murder--they are things I want
straightened out before I leave, Dan. You have both been good friends to
me, and I don't want any bar between you."
"What does all that matter now, Joe? She is out of our lives, and in a
happier one some one else is making for her. I am not likely ever to see
her again. She won't come back here."
"I know her best; she will come if she is needed. I need her for once; and
if you don't send for her, I will, Dan. Will you send?"
But Overton got up and walked away without answering. Harris thought he
would turn back after a little while, but he did not. He watched him out
of sight, and he was still going higher up in the hills.
"Trying to walk away from his desire for her," thought Joe, sadly. "Well,
he never will. He thinks I don't know. Poor Dan!"
Then he whistled to a man down below him, and the man came and helped him
down to camp, for his feet had grown helpless again in that strange chill
of which he had spoken.
Mrs. Huzzard met him at the door of a sitting room, gorgeous as an
apartment could well be in the Northern wilderness. All the luxuries
obtainable were there; for, as Harris had to live so much of his time
indoors, Overton seemed determined that he should get benefit from his new
fortune in some way. The finest of furs and of weavings furnished the
room, and a dainty little stand held a tea service of shell-pink china,
from which the steam floated cheerily.
And Lorena Jane herself partook of the general air of prosperity, as she
drew forward a great cushioned chair for the invalid and brought him a cup
of fragrant tea.
"I just knew you was tired the minute I saw you coming down that hill,"
she said, filling a cup herself and sitting down to enjoy it. "I knew a
cup of tea would do you good, for you ain't quite so brisk as you was a
few weeks ago."
"No," he agreed, and gulped down the beverage with a dubious expression on
his face. He very much preferred whisky as a tonic; but as Mrs. Huzzard
was bound to use that new tea service every day for his benefit, he
submitted without a protest and enjoyed most the number of cups she
disposed of.
"I suppose, now, you got sight from up there on the hill of the two young
folks going boat riding?" she remarked, with attempted indifference; and
he looked at her questioningly.
"Oh, I mean Lavina and the captain! Yes, he did get up ambition enough
to paddle a boat and ask her to ride in it; and away they went, giddy as
you please!"
"I thought you had a high regard for the captain?" remarked Harris.
"Who? Me? Well, as Mr. Overton's relation, of course I show him respect,"
and her tone was almost as pompous as that of the captain used to be. "But
I must say, sir, that to admire a man--for me to admire a man--he must
have a certain lot of push and ambition. He must be a real American, who
don't depend on the record of his dead relations to tell you how great he
is--a man who will dig either gold or potatoes if he needs them, and not
be afraid of spoiling his hands."
"Somebody like this new lucky man, McCoy," suggested Harris, and she
smiled complacently but did not answer.
And out on the little creek, sure enough, Lavina and the captain were
gliding with the current, and the current had got them into dangerous
waters.
"And you won't say yes, Lavina?" he asked, and she tapped her foot
impatiently on the bottom of the boat.
"I told you yes twenty-five years ago, Alf Leek," she answered.
He sighed helplessly. His old aggressive manner was all gone. The tactics
he would adopt for any other woman were useless with this one. She knew
him like a book. She had him completely cowed and miserable. No longer did
he regale admiring friends with tales of the late war, and incidentally
allow himself to be thought a hero. One look from Lavina would freeze the
story of the hottest battle that ever was fought.
To be sure, she had as yet refrained from using words against him; but how
long would she refrain? That question he had asked himself until, in
despair, a loop-hole from her quiet vengeance had occurred to him, and he
had asked her to marry him.
"You never could--would marry any one else," he said, pleadingly.
"Oh, couldn't I?"
"And I couldn't, either, Lavina," he continued, looking at her
sentimentally. But Lavina knew better.
"You would, if anybody would have you," she retorted. "I know I reached
here just in time to keep poor Lorena Jane from being made a victim of.
You would have been a tyrant over her, with your great pretensions, if I
hadn't stopped it. You always were tyrannical, Alf Leek; and the only time
you're humble as you ought to be is when you meet some one who can
tyrannize over you. You are one of the sort that needs it."
"That's why I asked you to marry me," he remarked, meekly.
And after a moment she said:
"Well, thinking of it from that point of view, I guess I will."
Far up on the heights, a man lying there alone saw the canoe with the man
and the woman in it, and it brought back to him keen rushes of memory from
the summer time that had been. It was only a year ago that 'Tana had
stepped into his canoe, and gone with him to the new life of the
settlement. How brave she had been! how daring! He liked best to remember
her as she had been then, with all the storms and sunshine of her face. He
liked to remember that she had said she would be cook for him, but for no
other man. Of course her words were a child's words, soon forgotten by
her. But all her words and looks and their journeys made him love the
land he had known her in. They were all the treasures he had with which to
comfort his loneliness.
And when in the twilight he descended to the camp, Joe--or his own
longings--had won.
"I will send the telegram for you, old fellow," he said, and that was all.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
AGAIN ON THE KOOTENAI.
Another canoe, with a woman in it, skimmed over the waters in the twilight
that evening--a woman with all the gladness of youth in her bright eyes,
and an eagerness for the north country that far outstripped the speed of
the boat.
Each dark tree-trunk as it loomed up from the shores, each glint of the
after-glow as it lighted the ripples, each whisper of the fresh, soft wind
of the mountains, was to her as a special welcome. All of them touched her
with the sense of a friendship that had been faithful. That she was no
more to them than any of the strangers who came and went on the current,
she could not believe; for they all meant so much, so very much to her.
She asked for a paddle, that she might once more feel against her strength
the strong rush of the mountain river. She caressed its waves and reached
out her hands to the bending boughs, and laughter and sighs touched her
lips.
"Never again!" she whispered, as if a promise was being made; "never
again! my wilderness!"
The man who had charge of the canoe--a stalwart, red-whiskered man of
perhaps forty-five--looked at her a good deal in a cautious way. She was
so unlike any of the girls he had ever seen--so gay, so free of speech
with each stranger or Indian who came their way; so daintily garbed in a
very correct creation of some city tailor; and, above all, so tenderly
careful of a child who slept among the rugs at her feet, and looked like a
bit of pink blossom against the dark furs.
"You are a stranger here, aren't you?" she asked the man. "I saw no one
like you running a boat here last summer."
"No, no," he said, slowly; "I didn't then. My camp is east of Bonner's
Ferry, quite a ways; but I get around here sometimes, too. I don't run a
boat only for myself; but when they told me a lady wanted to get to Twin
Springs, I didn't allow no scrub Indians to take her if my boat was good
enough."
"It is a lovely boat," she said, admiringly; "the prettiest I ever saw on
this river, and it is very good of you to bring me yourself. That is one
of the things makes me realize I am in the West once more--to be helped
simply because I am a girl alone. And you didn't even know my name when
you offered to bring me."
"No, but I did before I left shore," he answered; "and then I counted
myself kind of lucky. I--I've heard so much about you, miss, from folks up
at Twin Springs; from one lady there in particular--Mrs. Huzzard."
"Oh! so you know her, do you?" she asked, and wondered at the
self-conscious look with which he owned up that he did--a little.
"A little? Oh, that is not nearly enough," she said, good-naturedly.
"Lorena Jane is worth knowing a good deal of."
"That's my opinion, too," he agreed; "but a fellow needs some help
sometimes, if he ain't over handy with the gift of gab."
"Well, now, I should not think you would need much help," she answered.
"You ought to be the sort she would make friends with quick enough."
"Oh, yes--friends," he said, and sent the canoe on with swifter, stronger
strokes. The other boat, paddled by Indians and carrying baggage, was left
far behind.
"You make this run often?" she asked, with a little wonder as to who the
man was. His dress was much above the average, his boat was a beautiful
and costly thing, and she had not learned, in the haste of her departure,
who her boatman was.
"Not very often. Haven't been up this way for two weeks now."
"But that is often," she said. "Are you located in this country?"
"Well--yes, I have been. I struck a silver lode across the hills in yon
direction. I've sold out and am only prospecting around just now, not
settled anywhere yet. My name is McCoy."
"McCoy!" and like a flash she remembered the post-script of Mrs. Huzzard's
letter. "Oh, yes--I've heard of you."
"You have? Well, that's funny. I didn't know my name had got beyond the
ranges."
"Didn't you? Well, it got across the country to Manhattan Island--that's
where I was when it reached me," and she smiled quizzically. "You know
Mrs. Huzzard writes me letters sometimes."
"And do you mean--did she--"
"Yes, she did--mentioned your name very kindly, too," she said, as he
hesitated in a confused way. Then, with all the gladness of home-coming in
her heart and her desire that no heart should be left heavy, she added:
"And, really, as I told you before, I don't think you need much help."
The kindly, smiling eyes of the man thanked her, as he drove the canoe
through the clear waters. Above them the stars were commencing to gleam
faintly, and all the sweet odors of the dusk floated by them, and the
sweetest seemed to come to her from the north.