That Girl Montana Part 42

"You want to know all about it, don't you?" she asked, softly. "Well, it is all over. He was alive, after all, and I would not believe it. But now you need never trail him again, you can rest now, for he is dead. Somebody else has--has owed him a grudge, too. They think I am the somebody, but you don't believe that?"

He shook his head decidedly.

"No," she continued; "though for one moment, Joe, I thought that it might have been you. Yes, I did; for of course I knew it was only weakness would keep you from it, if you were in reach of him. But I remembered at once that it could not be, for the hand that struck him was strong."

He a.s.sented in his silent way, and watched her face closely, as if to read the shadows of thought thrown on it by her feelings.

"It's awful, ain't it?" she whispered. "It is what I said I hoped for, and just yet I can't be sorry--I can't! But, after this stir is all over, I know it will trouble me, make me sorry because I am not sorry now. I can't cry, but I do feel like screaming. And see! every once in a while my hands tremble; I tremble all over. Oh, it is awful!"

She buried her face in her hands. Only to him did she show any of the feeling with which the death of the man touched her.

"And you can't tell me anything of how it was done?" she said, at last.

"You so near--did you see any one?"

She longed to ask if he had seen Overton, but dared not utter his name, lest he might suspect as she did. Each hour that went by was an added gain to her for him. Of course he had struck, not knowing who the man was. If he had known, it would have been so easy to say, "I found him robbing the cabin. I killed him," and there would have been no further question concerning it.

"But if all the other bars were beaten down between us, this one would keep me from ever shaking hands with him again. Why should it have been he out of all the camp? Oh, it makes my heart ache!"

While she sat thus, with miserable thoughts, others came to the door, and looking up, she saw Akkomi, who looked on her with keen, accusing eyes.

"No--it is not true, Akkomi," she said, in his own jargon. "Keep silent for a little while of the things these people do not know--a little while, and then I can tell you who it is I am shielding, but not yet."

"Him!" and the eyes of the Indian turned to the paralytic.

"No--not him; truly not," she said, earnestly. "It is some one you would want to help if you knew--some one who is going fast on the path from these people. They will learn soon it is not I; but till then, keep silence."

"Dan--where?" he asked, laconically, and her face paled at the question.

Had he any reason to suspect the dread in her own mind? But a moment's thought rea.s.sured her. He had asked simply because Overton seemed always to him the controlling spirit of the camp, and Overton was the one he would have speech with, if any.

"Overton left last night for the lake," explained Lyster, who had entered and heard the name of Dan and the interrogative tone. Then the blanket was brought to Akkomi--his blanket, in which the man had died.

"I sold it to the white man--that is all," he answered through 'Tana; and more than that he would not say except to inform them he would wait for Dan. Which was, in fact, the general desire of the committee organized to investigate.

They all appeared to be waiting for Dan. Lyster did not by any means fill his place, simply because Lyster's interest in 'Tana was too apparent, and there was little of the cool quality of reason in his att.i.tude toward the mysterious case. He did not believe the ring she wore had belonged to Holly, though she refused to tell the source from which it had reached her. He did not believe the man who said he heard that war of words at her cabin in the evening--at least, when others were about, he acted as if he did not believe it. But when he and 'Tana chanced to be alone, she felt the doubt there must be in his mind, and a regret for him touched her. For his sake she was sorry, but not sorry enough to clear the mystery at the expense of that other man she thought she was shielding.

Captain Leek had been dispatched with all speed to the lake works, that Seldon, Haydon, and Overton might be informed of the trouble in camp, and hasten back to settle it. To send for them was the only thing Lyster thought of doing, for he himself felt powerless against the lot of men, who were not harsh or rude in any way, but who simply wanted to know "why"--so many "whys" that he could not answer.

Not less trying to him were the several who persisted in a.s.serting that she had done a commendable thing--that the country ought to feel grateful to her, for the man had made trouble along the Columbia for years. He and his confederates had done ugly work along the border, etc., etc.

"Sorry you asked me, Max?" she said, seeing his face grow gloomy under their cheering (?) a.s.sertions.

He did not answer at once, afraid his impatience with her might make itself apparent in his speech.

"No, I'm not sorry," he said, at last; "but I shall be relieved when the others arrive from the lake. Since you utterly refuse to confide even in me, you render me useless as to serving you; and--well--I can't feel flattered that you confide in me no more than in the strangers here."

"I know," she agreed, with a little sigh, "it is hard on you, and it will be harder still if the story of this should ever creep out of the wilderness to the country where you come from--wouldn't it?" and she looked at him very sharply, noting the swift color flush his face, as though she had read his thoughts. "Yes--so it's lucky, Max, that we haven't talked to others about that little conditional promise, isn't it?

So it will be easier to forget, and no one need know."

"You mean you think me the sort of fellow to break our engagement just because these fools have mixed you up with this horror?" he asked, angrily. "You've no right to think that of me; neither have you the right--in justice to me as well as yourself--to maintain this very suggestive manner about all things connected with the murder. Why can you not tell more clearly where your time was spent last evening? Why will you not tell where the ring came from? Why will you see me half-frantic over the whole miserable affair, when you could, I am sure, easily change it?"

"Oh, Max, I don't want to worry you--indeed I don't! But--" and she smiled mirthlessly. "I told you once I was a 'hoodoo.' The people who like me are always sure to have trouble brewing for them. That is why I say you had better give me up, Max; for this is only the beginning."

"Don't talk like that; it is folly," he said, in a sharp tone. "'Hoodoo!'

Nonsense! When Overton and the others arrive, they will find a means of changing the ideas of these people, in spite of your reticence; and then maybe old Akkomi may find words, too. He sits outside the door as impa.s.sive as the clay image you gave me and bewitched me with."

She smiled faintly, thinking of those days--how very long ago they seemed, yet it was this same summer.

"I feel as if I had lived a long time since I played with that clay," she said, wistfully; "so many things have been made different for me."

Then she arose and walked about the little room restlessly, while the eyes of Harris never left her. Into the other room she had not gone at all, for in it was the dead stranger.

"When do you look for your uncle and Mr. Haydon?" she asked, at last, for the silences were hardest to endure.

She would laugh, or argue, or ridicule--do anything rather than sit silent with questioning eyes upon her. She even grew to fancy that Harris must accuse her--he watched her so!

"When do we look for them? Well, I don't dare let myself decide. I only hope they may have made a start back, and will meet the captain on his way. As to Dan--he had not so very much the start, and they ought to catch up with him, for there were the two Indian canoeists--the two best ones; and when they are racing over the water, with an object, they surely ought to make better time than he. I can't see that he had any very pressing reason for going at all."

"He doesn't talk much about his reasons," she answered.

"No; that's a fact," he agreed, "and less of late than when I knew him first. But he'll make Akkomi talk, maybe, when he arrives--and I hope you, too."

"When he arrives!"

She thought the words, but did not say them aloud. She sat long after Max had left her, and thought how many hours must elapse before they discovered that Dan had not followed the other men to the lake works. She felt sure that he was somewhere in the wilderness, avoiding the known paths, alone, and perhaps hating her as the cause of his isolation, because she would not confess what the man was to her, but left him blindly to keep his threat, and kill him when found in her room.

Ah! why not have trusted him with the whole truth? She asked herself the question as she sat there, but the mere thought of it made her face grow hot, and her jaws set defiantly.

She would not--she could not! so she told herself. Better--better far be suspected of a murder--live all her life under the blame of it for him--than to tell him of a past that was dead to her now, a past she hated, and from which she had determined to bar herself as far as silence could build the wall. And to tell him--him--she could not.

But even as she sat, with her burning face in her hands, quick, heavy steps came to the door, halted, and looking up she found Dan before her.

"Oh! you should not," she whispered, hurriedly. "Why did you come back?

They do not suspect; they think I did it--and so--"

"What does this all mean?--what do you mean?" he asked. "Can't you speak?"

It seemed she could not find any more words, she stared at him so helplessly.

"Max, come here!" he called, to hasten steps already approaching. "Come, all of you; I had only a moment to listen to the captain when he caught up with me. But he told me she is suspected of murder--that a ring she wore last night helped the suspicion on. I didn't wait to hear any more, for I gave the little girl that snake ring--gave it to her weeks ago. I bought it from a miner, and he told me he got it from an Indian near Karlo. Now are you ready to suspect me, too, because I had it first?"

"The ring wasn't just the most important bit of circ.u.mstantial evidence, Mr. Overton," answered the man named Saunders; "and we are all mighty glad you've got here. It was in her room the man was found, and a knife she borrowed from you was what killed him; and of where she was just about the time the thing happened she won't say anything."

His face paled slightly as he looked at her and heard the brief summing up of the case.

"My knife?" he said, blankly.

"Yes, sir. When some one said it was your knife, she spoke up and said it was, but that you had not had it since noon, for she borrowed it then to cut a stick; but beyond that she don't tell a thing."