That Girl Montana
years--a child; and he noticed, with satisfaction, that she looked at him
more frankly, while the suspicion faded almost entirely from her face.
"And are you going to develop into a sculptor under Overton's
guardianship?" he asked. "You see, he has told me of his good luck."
She made a queer little sound between a laugh and a grunt.
"I'll bet the rest of the blue beads he didn't call it good luck," she
returned, looking at him keenly. "Now, honest Injun--did he?"
"Honest Injun! he didn't speak of it as either good or bad luck; simply as
a matter of course, that at your father's death you should look him up,
and let him know you were alone. Oh, he is a good fellow, Dan is, and
glad, I am sure, to be of use to you."
Her lips opened in a little sigh of content, and a swift, radiant smile
was given him.
"I'm right glad you say that about him," she answered, "and I guess you
know him well, too. Akkomi likes him, and Akkomi's sharp."
The winner of the race here trotted back for the coin, and Lyster showed
another one, as an incentive for all to scatter along the beach again. It
looked as though the two white people must pay for the grant of privacy on
the river-bank.
Having grown more at ease with him, 'Tana resumed again the patting and
pressing of the clay, using only a little pointed stick, while Lyster
watched, with curiosity, the ingenious way in which she seemed to feel her
way to form.
"Have you ever tried to draw?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Only to copy pictures, like I've seen in some papers, but they never
looked right. But I want to do everything like that--to make pictures, and
statues, and music, and--oh, all the lovely things there are somewhere,
that I've never seen--never will see them, I suppose. Sometimes, when I
get to thinking that I never will see them, I just get as ugly as a
drunken man, and I don't care if I never do see anything but Indians
again. I get so awful reckless. Say!" she said, again with that hard,
short laugh, "girls back your way don't get wild like that, do they? They
don't talk my way either, I guess."
"Maybe not, and few of them would be able, either, to do what we saw you
do in this river yesterday," he said kindly. "Dan is a judge of such
things, you know, and he thought you very nervy."
"Nervy? Oh, yes; I guess he'd be nervy himself if he was needed. Say! can
you tell me about the camp, or settlement, at this Sinna Ferry? I never
was there. He says white women are there. Do you know them?"
Lyster explained his own ignorance of the place, knowing it as he did only
through Dan's descriptions.
Then she, from her bit of Indian knowledge, told him Sinna was the old
north Indian name for Beaver. Then he got her to tell him other things of
the Indian country, things of ghost-haunted places and strange witcheries,
with which they confused the game and the fish. He fell to wondering what
manner of man Rivers, the partner of Dan, had been, that his daughter had
gained such strange knowledge of the wild things. But any attempt to learn
or question her history beyond yesterday was always checked in some way or
other.
CHAPTER IV.
DAN'S WARD.
Mr. Max Lyster was not given to the study of deep problems; his habits of
thought did not run in that groove. But he did watch the young stranger
with unusual interest. Her face puzzled him as much as her presence
there.
"I feel as though I had seen you before," he said at last, and her face
grew a shade paler. She did not look up, and when she spoke, it was very
curtly:
"Where?"
"Oh, I don't know--in fact, I believe it is a resemblance to some one I
know that makes me feel that way."
"I look like some one you know?"
"Well, yes, you do--a little--a lady who is a little older than you--a
little more of a brunette than you; yet there is a likeness."
"Where does she live--and what is her name?" she asked, with scant
ceremony.
"I don't suppose her name would tell you much," he answered. "But it is
Miss Margaret Haydon, of Philadelphia."
"Miss Margaret Haydon," she said slowly, almost contemptuously. "So you
know her?"
"You speak as though you did," he answered; "and as if you did not like
the name, either."
"But you think it's pretty," she said, looking at him sharply. "No, I
don't know such swells--don't want to."
"How do you know she is a swell?"
"Oh, there's a man owns big works across the country, and that's his name.
I suppose they are all of a lot," she said, indifferently. "Say! are there
any girls at Sinna Ferry, any family folks? Dan didn't tell me--only said
there was a white woman there, and I could live with her. He hasn't a
wife, has he?"
"Dan?" and he laughed at the idea, "well, no. He is very kind to women,
but I can't imagine the sort of woman he would marry. He is a queer fish,
you know."
"I guess you'll think we're all that up in this wild country," she
observed. "Does he know much about books and such things?"
"Such things?"
"Oh, you know! things of the life in the cities, where there's music and
theaters. I love the theaters and pictures! and--and--well, everything
like that."
Lyster watched her brightening face, and appreciated all the longing in it
for the things he liked well himself. And she loved the theaters! All his
own boyish enthusiasm of years ago crowded into his memory, as he looked
at her.
"You have seen plays, then?" he asked, and wondered where she had seen
them along that British Columbia line.
"Seen plays! Yes, in 'Frisco, and Portland, and Victoria--big, real
theaters, you know; and then others in the big mining camps. Oh, I just
dream over plays, when I do see them, specially when the actresses are
pretty. But I mostly like the villains better than the heroes. Don't know
why, but I do."
"What! you like to see their wickedness prosper?"
"No--I think not," she said, doubtfully. "But I tell you, the heroes are
generally just too good to be live men, that's all. And the villain mostly
talks more natural, gets mad, you know, and breaks things, and rides over
the lay-out as though he had some nerve in him. Of course, they always
make him throw up his hands in the end, and every man in the audience
applauds--even the ones who would act just as he does if such a pretty
hero was in their way."
"Well, you certainly have peculiar ideas of theatrical personages--for a
young lady," decided Lyster, laughing. "And why you have a grievance
against the orthodox handsome hero, I can't see."
"He's too good," she insisted, with the little frown appearing between her
brows, "and no one is ever started in the play with a fair chance against
him. He is always called Willie, where the villain would be called
Bill--now, isn't he? Then the girl in the story always falls in love with
him at first sight, and that's enough to rile any villain, especially when
he wants her himself."
"Oh!" and the face of the young man was a study, as he inspected this
wonderful ward of Dan. Whatever he had expected from the young swimmer of
the Kootenai, from the welcomed guest of Akkomi, he had not expected this
sort of thing.
She was twisting her pretty mouth, with a schoolgirl's earnestness, over a
problem, and accenting thus her patient forming of the clay face. She
built no barriers up between herself and this handsome stranger, as she
had in the beginning with Overton. What she had to say was uttered with
all freedom--her likes, her thoughts, her ambitions. At first the fineness
and perfection of his apparel had been as grandeur and insolence when
contrasted with her own weather-stained, coarse skirt of wool, and her
boy's blouse belted with a strap of leather. Even the blue beads--her one
feminine bit of adornment--had been stripped from her throat, that she
might give some pleasure to the little bronze-tinted runners on the shore.
But the gently modulated, sympathetic tones of Lyster and the kindly
fellowship in his eyes, when he looked at her, almost made her forget her
own shabbiness (all but those hideous coarse shoes!) for he talked to her
with the grace of the people in the plays she loved so, and had not once
spoken as though to a stray found in the shelter of an Indian camp.
But he did look curious when she expressed those independent ideas on
questions over which most girls would blush or appear at least a little
conscious.
"So, you would put a veto on love at first sight, would you?" he asked,
laughingly. "And the beauty of the hero would not move you at all? What a
very odd young lady you would have me think you! I believe love at first
sight is generally considered, by your age and sex, the pinnacle of all
things hoped for."
A little color did creep into her face at the unnecessary personal
construction put on her words. She frowned to hide her embarrassment and
thrust out her lips in a manner that showed she had little vanity as to
her features and their attractiveness.
"But I don't happen to be a young lady," she retorted; "and we think as we
please up here in the bush. Maybe your proper young ladies would be very
odd, too, if they were brought up out here like boys."
She arose to her feet, and he saw more clearly then how slight she was;
her form and face were much more childish in character than her speech,
and the face was looking at him with resentful eyes.
"I'm going back to camp."
"Now, I've offended you, haven't I?" he asked, in surprise. "Really, I did
not mean to. Won't you forgive me?"
She dug her heel in the sand and did not answer; but the fact that she
remained at all assured him she would relent. He was amused at her quick
show of temper. What a prospect for Dan!
"I scarcely know what I said to vex you," he began; but she flashed a
sullen look at him.
"You think I'm odd--and--and a nobody; just because I ain't like fine
young ladies you know somewheres--like Miss Margaret Haydon," and she dug
the sand away with vicious little kicks. "Nice ladies with kid slippers
on," she added, derisively, "the sort that always falls in love with the
pretty man, the hero. Huh! I've seen some men who were heroes--real
ones--and I never saw a pretty one yet."
As she said it, she looked very straight into the very handsome face of
Mr. Lyster.
"A young Tartar!" he decided, mentally, while he actually colored at the
directness of her gaze and her sweepingly contemptuous opinion of "pretty
men."
"I see I'd better vacate your premises since you appear unwilling to
forgive me even my unintentional faults," he decided, meekly. "I'm very
sorry, I'm sure, and hope you will bear no malice. Of course I--nobody
would want you to be different from what you are; so you must not think I
meant that. I had hoped you would let me buy that clay bust as a memento
of this morning, but I'm afraid to ask favors now. I can only hope that
you will speak to me again to-morrow. Until then, good-by."
She raised her eyes sullenly at first, but they dropped, ashamed, before
the kindness of his own. She felt coarse and clumsy, and wished she had
not been so quick to quarrel. And he was turning away! Maybe he would
never speak nicely to her again, and she loved to hear him speak.
Then her hand was thrust out to him, and in it was the little clay model.
"You can have it. I'll give it to you," she said, quite humbly. "It ain't
very pretty, but if you like it--"
Thus ended the first of many differences between Dan's ward and Dan's
friend.
When Daniel Overton himself came stalking down among the Indian children,
looking right and left from under his great slouch hat, he halted
suddenly, and with his lips closed somewhat grimly, stood there watching
the rather pretty picture before him.
But the prettiness of it did not seem to appeal to him strongly. He looked