That Girl Montana Part 30

"Tut, tut, Lavina! Max Lyster is all eyes and hands for her just now. He will fan her and laugh with her; but it will be Dan who digs for her and takes the weight of her care on his shoulders, even if he never says a word about it. That is just Dan Overton's way."

"And a very fine way it is, Lorena," said Miss Sloc.u.m, while her eyes wandered out to where he stood talking to Lyster. "I've met many men of fine manners in my time, but I never was more impressed at first sight by any person than by him when he conducted me personally to you on my arrival. The man had never heard my name before, yet he received me as if this camp had been arranged on purpose for my visit, and that he himself had been expecting me. If that did not contain the very essence of fine manners, I never saw any, Lorena Jane."

"I--I s'pose it does, Lavina," agreed Mrs. Huzzard; "though I never heard any one go on much about his manners before. And as for me--well," and she looked a bit embarra.s.sed, "I ain't the best judge myself. I've had such a terrible hard tussle to make a living since my man died, that I hain't had time to study fine manners. I'll have time enough before long, I suppose, for Dan Overton surely has offered me liberal living wages. But, Lavina, even if I did want to learn now, I wouldn't know where to commence."

"Well, Lorena, since you mention it, there is lots of room for improvement in your general manner. You've been with careless people, I suppose, and bad habits are gathered that way. Now I never was much of a genius--couldn't trim a bonnet like you to save my life; but I did have a most particular mother; and she held that good manners was a recommendation in any land. So, even if her children had no fortune left them, they were taught to show they had careful bringing up. One of my ideas in coming out here was that I might teach deportment in some Indian school, but not much of that notion is left me. Could I ever teach Flap-Jacks to quit scratching her head in the presence of ladies and gentlemen? No."

"I don't think," said Mrs. Huzzard, in a meditative way, "that I mind the scratching so much as I do the dratted habit she has of carrying the dish-cloth under her arm when she don't happen to be using it. That just wears on my nerves, it does. But I tell you what it is, Lavina--if you are kind of disappointed on account of not getting Indian scholars that suit just yet, I'm more than half willing you should teach me the deportment, if you'd be satisfied with one big white scholar instead of a lot of little red ones."

"Yes, indeed, and glad to do it," said Miss Sloc.u.m, frankly. "Your heart is all right, Lorena Jane; but a warm heart will not make people forget that you lean your elbow on the table and put your food into your mouth with your knife. Such things jar on other people just as Flap-Jacks and the dish-cloth jar on you. Don't you understand? But your desire to improve shows that you are a very remarkable woman, Lorena, for very few people are willing to learn new habits after having followed careless ones for forty years."

"Thirty-nine," corrected Lorena Jane, showing that, however peculiar and remarkable her wisdom might be in some directions, it did not prevent a natural womanly feeling regarding the number of years she had lived.

"You see," she continued, after a little, as Miss Lavina kept a discreet silence, "this here gold fever is catching; and if any one gets started on the right track, there is no telling what day he may stumble over a fortune. One might come my way--or yours, Lavina. And, just as you say, fine manners is a heap of help in sa.s.siety. And thinking of it that way makes me feel I'd like to be prepared to enjoy, in first-cla.s.s style, any amount of money I might get a chance at up here. For I tell you what it is, Lavina, this Western land is a woman's country. Her chances in most things are always as good, and mostly better than a man's."

"Yes, if she does not die from fright at the creepy looks of the friendly Indians," said Miss Sloc.u.m, with a shivering breath. "I have not slept sound for a single minute since I saw that old smoking wretch who never seems a rod from this cabin. Now down there at Sinna Ferry I thought it might be kind of nice, though we stopped only a little while, and I was not up in the street. Any real genteel people there?"

"Well--yes, there is," answered Lorena Jane, after a slight hesitation as to just how much it would be wise to say of the genteel gentleman who resided in Sinna Ferry, and was in her eyes a model of culture and disdainful superiority. Indeed, that disdain of his had been a first cause in her desire to reach the state of polish he himself enjoyed--to rise above the vulgar level of manners that had of old seemed good enough to her. "Yes, there is some high-toned folks there; the doctor's wife and family, for one; and then there is a very genteel man there--Captain Leek. He is an ex-officer in the late war, you know; a real military gentleman, with a wound in his leg. Limps some, but not enough to make him awkward. He keeps the postoffice. But if this Government looked after its heroes as it ought to, he'd be getting a good pension--that's just what he would. I'm too sound a Union woman not to feel riled at times when I see the defenders of the Const.i.tution go unrewarded."

"Don't say 'riled,' Lorena," corrected Miss Sloc.u.m. "You must drop that and 'dratted' and 'I'll swan'; for I don't think you could tell what any of them mean. I couldn't, I'm sure. But I used to know a family of Leeks back in Ohio. They were Democrats, though, and their boys joined the Confederate Army, though I heard they wasn't much good to the cause. But of course it is not likely to be one of them."

"I should think not," agreed Mrs. Huzzard, stoutly. "I never heard him talk politics much; but I do know that he wears nothing but the Union blue to this day, and always that military sort of hat with a cord around it--so--so dignified like."

"No, I did not suppose it could be the one I knew," said her cousin; "the military uniform decides that."

CHAPTER XVIII.

AWAKENING.

"Flap-Jacks," said 'Tana, softly, so as to reach no ear but that of the squaw, who came in from Harris' cabin to find the parasol of Miss Sloc.u.m, who was about to walk in the sunshine. To the red creature of the forest this parasol seemed the most wonderfully beautiful thing of all the strange things which the white squaws made use of. "Flap-Jacks, are they gone?"

Three weeks had gone by, three weeks of miraculous changes in the beauty of their wild nook along the trail of the old river.

"Twin Springs," the place was called now--Twin Spring Mines. Already men were at work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one of the year.

Through all the turbulence that swept up the little stream to their camp, two of the discovering party were housed, sick and silent, in the little double cabin. The doctor could see no reason why 'Tana was so slow in her recovery; he had expected so much more of her--that she would be carried into health again by the very force of her ambition, and her eager delight in the prospects which her newly acquired wealth was opening up to her.

But puzzling to relate, she showed no eagerness at all about it. Her ambitions, if she had any, were asleep, and she scarcely asked a question concerning all the changes of life and people around her. Listless she lay from one day to another, accepting the attention of people indifferently.

Max would read to her a good deal, and several times she asked to be carried into the cabin of Harris, where she would sit for hours talking to him, sometimes in a low voice and then again sitting close beside him in long silences, which, strangely enough, seemed more of companionship to her than the presence of people who laughed and talked. They wearied her at times. When she was able to walk out, she liked to go alone; even Max she had sent back when he followed her.

But she never went far. Sometimes she would sit for an hour by the stream, watching the water slip past the pebbles and the gra.s.ses, and on to its turbulent journey toward a far-off rest in the Pacific. And again, she would watch some strange miner dig and wash the soil in his search for the precious "yellow." But her walks were ever within the limits of the busy diggings; all her old fondness for the wild places seemed sleeping--like her ambitions.

"She needs change now. Get her away from here," advised the doctor, who no longer felt that she needed medicines, but who could not, with all his skill, build her up again into the daring, saucy 'Tana, who had won the game of cards from the captain that night at the select party at Sinna Ferry.

But when Overton, after much hesitation, broached the subject of her going away, she did look at him with a touch of the old defiance in her face, and after a bit said:

"I guess the camp will have to be big enough for you and me, too, a few days longer. I haven't made up my mind as to when I want to go."

"But the summer will not last long, now. You must commence to think of where you want to go; for when the cold weather comes, 'Tana, you can't remain here."

"I can if I want to," she answered.

After one troubled, helpless look at her pale face, he walked out of the cabin; and Lyster, who had wanted to ask the result of the interview, could not find him all that evening. He had gone somewhere alone, up on the mountain.

She had answered him with a great deal of cool indifference; but when the two cousins entered her room, she was on the bed with her face buried in the pillows, weeping in an uncontrollable manner that filled them with dismay. The doctor decided that while Dan was a good fellow in most ways, he evidently had not a soothing influence on 'Tana, possibly not realizing the changed mental condition laid on her by her sickness. The doctor further made up his mind that, without hurting Dan's feelings, he must find some other mouthpiece for his ideas concerning her or reason with her himself.

But, so far, she would only say she was not ready to go yet. Dan, wishing to make her stay comfortable as possible, went quietly to all the settlements within reach for luxuries in the way of house-furnishing, and had Mrs. Huzzard use them in 'Tana's cabin. But when he had done all this, she never asked a question as to where the comforts came from--she, who, a short month before, had valued each kind glance received from him.

Mrs. Huzzard was sorely afraid that it was pride, the pride of newly acquired wealth, that changed her from the gay, saucy girl into a moody, dreamy being, who would lie all alone for hours and not notice any of them coming and going. The good soul had many a heartache over it all, never guessing that it was an ache and a shame in the heart of the girl that made the new life that was given her seem a thing of little value.

'Tana had watched the squaw wistfully at times, as if expecting her to say something to her when the others were not around, but she never did. When 'Tana heard the ladies ask Lyster to go with them to a certain place where beautiful mosses were to be found, she waited with impatience until their voices left the door.

The squaw shook her head when asked in that whispering way of their departure; but when she had carried out the parasol and watched the party disappear beyond the numerous tents now dotting the s.p.a.ces where the gra.s.s grew rank only a month before, then she slipped back and stood watchful and silent inside the door.

"Come close," said the girl, motioning with a certain nervousness to her.

She was not the brave, indifferent little girl she had been of old. "Come close--some one might listen, somewhere. I've been so sick--I've dreamed so many things that I can't tell some days what is dream and what is true.

I lie here and think and think, but it will not come clear. Listen! I think sometimes you and I hunted for tracks--a white man's tracks--across there where the high ferns are. You showed them to me, and then we came back when the moon shone, and it was light like day, and I picked white flowers. Some days I think of it--of the tracks, long, slim tracks, with the boot heel. Then my head hurts, and I think maybe we never found the tracks, maybe it is only a dream, like--like other things!"

She did not ask if it were so, but she leaned forward with all of eager question in her eyes. It was the first time she had shown strong interest in anything. But, having aroused from her listlessness to speak of the ghosts of fancy haunting her, she seemed quickened to anxiety by the picture her own words conjured up.

"Ah! those tracks in the black mud and that face above the ledge!"

"It is true," said the squaw, "and not a dream. The track of the white man was there, and the moon was in the sky, as you say."

"Ah!" and the evidently unwelcome truth made her clench her fingers together despairingly; she had hoped so that it was a dream. The truth of it banished her lethargy, made her think as nothing else had. "Ah! it was so, then; and the face--the face was real, was--"

"I saw no face," said the squaw.

"But I did--yes, I did," she muttered. "I saw it like the face of a white devil!"

Then she checked herself and glanced at the Indian woman, whose dark, heavy face appeared so stupid. Still, one never could tell by the looks of an Indian how much or how little he knows of the thing you want to know; and after a moment's scrutiny, the girl asked:

"Did you learn more of the tracks?--learn who the white man was that made them?"

The woman shook her head.

"You sick--much sick," she explained. "All time Dan he say: 'Stay here by white girl's bed. Never leave.' So I not get out again, and the rain come wash all track away."

"Does Dan know?--did you tell him?"

"No, Dan never ask--never talk to me, only say, 'Take care 'Tana,' that all."

The girl asked no more, but lay there on her couch, filled with dry moss and covered with skins of the mountain wolf. Her eyes closed as though she were asleep; but the squaw knew better, and after a little, she said doubtfully:

"Maybe Akkomi know."