That Girl Montana Part 32

"It is rather late in the day for them to come with offers to help me,"

she said, bitterly. "I can help myself now; but if they had looked for me a year ago--two or three years ago--"

"Looked for you!" he exclaimed, with a sort of impatient wonder. "Why, my dear girl, who would even think of hunting for little white girls in these forests? Don't be foolishly resentful now that people want to be nice to you. You could not expect attention from people before they were aware of your existence."

"But they did know of my existence!" she answered, curtly. "Oh! you needn't stare at me like that, Mr. Max Lyster! I know what I'm talking about. I have the very shaky honor of being a relation of your fine gentleman from the East. I thought it when I heard the name, but did not suppose he would know it. And I'm not too proud of it, either, as you seem to think I ought to be."

"But they are one of our best families--"

"Then your worst must be pretty bad," she interrupted. "I know just about what they are."

"But 'Tana--how does it come--"

"I won't answer any questions about it, Max, so don't ask," and she folded up the letter and tore it into very little pieces, which she let fall into the water. "I am not going to claim the relationship or their hospitality, and I would just as soon you forgot that I acknowledged it. I didn't mean to tell, but that letter vexed me."

"Look here, 'Tana," and Lyster caught her hand again. "I can't let you act like this. They can be of much more help to you socially than all your money. If the family are related to you, and offer you attention, you can't afford to ignore it. You do not realize now how much their attention will mean; but when you are older, you will regret losing it. Let me advise you--let me--"

"Oh, hush!" she said, closing her eyes, wearily. "I am tired--tired! What difference does it make to you--why need you care?"

"May I tell you?" and he looked at her so strangely, so gravely, that her eyes opened in expectation of--she knew not what.

"I did not mean to let you know so soon, 'Tana," and his clasp of her hand grew closer; "but, it is true--I love you. Everything that concerns you makes a difference to me. Now do you understand?"

"You!--Max--"

"Don't draw your hand away. Surely you guessed--a little? I did not know myself how much I cared till you came so near dying. Then I knew I could not bear to let you go. And--and you care a little too, don't you! Speak to me!"

"Let us go home," she answered in a low voice, and tried to draw her fingers away. She liked him--yes; but--

"Tana, won't you speak? Oh, my dear, dear one, when you were so ill, so very ill, you knew no one else, but you turned to me. You went asleep with your cheek against my hand, and more than once, 'Tana, with your hand clasping mine. Surely that was enough to make me hope--for you did like me a little, then."

"Yes, I--liked you," but she turned her head away, that he could not see her flushed face. "You were good to me, but I did not know--I could not guess--" and she broke down as though about to cry, and his own eyes were full of tenderness. She appealed to him now as she had never done in her days of brightness and laughter.

"Listen to me," he said, pleadingly. "I won't worry you. I know you are too weak and ill to decide yet about your future. I don't ask you to answer me now. Wait. Go to school, as I know you intend to do; but don't forget me. After the school is over you can decide. I will wait with all patience. I would not have told you now, but I wanted you to know I was interested in the answer you would give Haydon. I wanted you to know that I would not for the world advise you, but for your best interests. Won't you believe--"

"I believe you; but I don't know what to say to you. You are different from me--your people are different. And of my people you know nothing, nothing at all, and--"

"And it makes no difference," he interrupted. "I know you have had a lot of trouble for a little girl, or your family have had trouble you are sensitive about. I don't know what it is, but it makes no difference--not a bit. I will never question about it, unless you prefer to tell of your own accord. Oh, my dear! if some day you could be my wife, I would help you forget all your childish troubles and your unpleasant life."

"Let us go home," she said, "you are good to me, but I am so tired."

He obediently turned the canoe, and at that moment voices came to them from toward the river--ringing voices of men.

"It is possibly Mr. Haydon and others," he exclaimed, after listening a moment. "We have been expecting them for days. That was why I could no longer put off giving you the letter."

"I know," she said, and her face flushed and paled a little, as the voices came closer. He could see she nervously dreaded the meeting.

"Shall I get the canoe back to camp before they come?" he asked kindly; but she shook her head.

"You can't, for they move fast," she answered, as she listened. "They would see us; and, if he is with them, he--would think I was afraid."

He let the canoe drift again, and watched her moody face, which seemed to grow more cold with each moment that the strangers came closer. He was filled with surprise at all she had said of Haydon and of the letter. Who would have dreamed that she--the little Indian-dressed guest of Akkomi's camp--would be connected with the most exclusive family he knew in the East? The Haydon family was one he had been especially interested in only a year ago, because of Mr. Haydon's very charming daughter. Miss Haydon, however, had a clever and ambitious mamma, who persisted in keeping him at a safe distance.

Max Lyster, with his handsome face and unsettled prospects, was not the brilliant match her hopes aspired to. Pretty Margaret Haydon had, in all obedience, refused him dances and affected not to see his efforts to be near her. But he knew she did see; and one little bit of comfort he had taken West with him was the fancy that her refusals were never voluntary affairs, and that she had looked at him as he had never known her to look at another man.

Well, that was a year ago, and he had just asked another girl to marry him--a girl who did not look at him at all, but whose eyes were on the swift-flowing current--troubled eyes, that made him long to take care of her.

"Won't you speak to me at all?" he asked. "I will do anything to help you, 'Tana--anything at all."

She nodded her head slowly.

"Yes--now," she answered. "So would Mr. Haydon, Max."

"'Tana! do you mean--" His face flushed hotly, and he looked at her for the first time with anger in his face.

She put out her hand in a tired, pleading way.

"I only mean that now, when I have been lucky enough to help myself, it seems as if every one thinks I need looking after so much more than they used to. Maybe because I am not strong yet--maybe so; I don't know." Then she smiled and looked at him curiously.

"But I made a mistake when I said 'every one,' didn't I? For Dan never comes near me any more."

Then the strange canoes came in sight and very close to them, as they turned a bend in the creek. There were three large boats--one carrying freight, one filled with new men for the works, and in the other--the foremost one--was Mr. Haydon, and a tall, thin, middle-aged stranger.

"Uncle Seldon!" exclaimed Lyster, with animation, and held the canoe still in the water, that the other might come close, and in a whisper he said:

"The one to the right is Mr. Haydon."

He glanced at her and saw she was making a painful effort at self-control.

"Don't worry," he whispered. "We will just speak, and drift on past them."

But when they called greeting to each other, and the Indian boatman was told to send their craft close to the little camp canoe, she raised her head and looked very levelly across the stranger, who had hair so like her own, and spoke to the Indian who paddled their boat as though he were the only one there to notice.

"Plucky!" decided Mr. Haydon, "and stubborn;" but he kept those thoughts to himself, and said aloud: "My dear young lady, I am indeed pleased to see you so far recovered since my last visit. I presume you know who I am," and he looked at her in a smiling, confidential way.

"Yes, I know who you are. Your name is Haydon, and--there is a piece of your letter."

She picked up a fragment of paper that had fallen at her feet, and flung it out from her on the water. Mr. Haydon affected not to see the pettish act, but turned to his companion.

"Will you allow me, Miss Rivers, to introduce another member of our firm?

This is Mr. Seldon. Seldon, this is the young girl I told you of."

"I knew it before you spoke," said the other man, who looked at her with a great deal of interest, and a great deal of kindness. "My child, I was your mother's friend long ago. Won't you let me be yours?"

She reached out her hand to him, and the quick tears came to her eyes. She trusted without question the earnest gray eyes of the speaker, and turned from her own uncle to the uncle of Max.