That Girl Montana Part 45

"All very well--all very well for you to be indifferent," returned Mr.

Haydon, with some impatience. "You have no family to consider, no matter what wild escapade she would be guilty of, you would not be touched by the disgrace of it, because she doesn't belong in any way to your family."

"Maybe she will, though," suggested Seldon.

Mr. Haydon shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"You mean through Max, don't you?" he asked. "Yes, I was simple enough to build on that myself--thought what a nice, quiet way it would be of arranging the whole affair; but after a talk with this ranger, Overton, whom you and Max unite in admiring, I concluded he might be in the way."

"Overton? Nonsense!"

"Well, maybe; but he made himself very autocratic when I attempted to discuss her future. He seemed to show a good deal of authority concerning her affairs."

"Not a bit more than he does over the affairs of their paralyzed partner in there," answered Seldon. "If she always makes as square friends as Dan Overton, I shan't quarrel with her judgment."

When 'Tana left them and went into the other cabin, she stood looking at Harris a long time in a curious, scrutinizing way, and his face changed from doubt to dread before she spoke.

"I am hardly able to think any more, Joe," she said at last, and her tired eyes accented the truth of her words; "but something like a thought keeps hammering in my head about you--about you and--" She pointed to the next room. "If you could walk, I should know you did it. If you could talk, I should know you had it done. I wouldn't tell on you; but I'd be glad I was going where I would not see you, for I never could touch your hand again.

I am going away, Joe; won't you tell me true whether you know who did it?

Do you?"

He shook his head with his eyes closed. He, too, looked pale and worn, and noticing it, she asked if he would not rather move to some other dwelling, since--

He nodded his head with a sort of eagerness. All of the two days and the night he had sat there, with only the folds of a blanket to separate him from the room where his dead foe lay.

"I will speak to them about it right away." She lifted his hand and stroked it with a sort of sympathy. "Joe, can you forgive him now?" she whispered.

He made her no reply; only closed his eyes as before.

"You can't, then? and I can't ask you to, though I suppose I ought to.

Margaret would," and she smiled strangely. "You don't know Margaret, do you? Well, neither do I. But I guess she is the sort of girl I ought to be. Joe, I can't stay in camp any longer. Maybe I'll leave for the Ferry to-day. Will you miss me? Yes, I know you will," she added, "and I will miss you, too. Do you know--can you tell when Dan will come back?"

He shook his head, and an hour later she said to Max:

"Take me away from here, back to the Ferry--any place. Mrs. Huzzard will, maybe, come for a few days--or Miss Sloc.u.m. Ask them, and let me go soon."

And an hour after they had started, another canoe went slowly over the water toward the Kootenai River, a canoe guided by Akkomi; and in it lay the blanket-draped figure of the man whose death was yet a mystery to the camp. He was at least borne to his resting place by a friend, though what the reason for Akkomi's faithfulness, no one ever knew; for some favor in the past, no doubt. Seldon knew that 'Tana would rather Akkomi should be the one to cover his grave, though where it was made, no white man ever knew.

CHAPTER XXV.

ON MANHATTAN ISLAND.

"What do you intend to make of your life, Montana, since you avoid all questions of marriage? You will not go to school, and care nothing about fitting yourself for the society where by right you should belong."

A whole winter had gone, and the springtime had come again; and over all the Island of Manhattan, and on the heights back from the rivers, the green of the leaves was creeping over the boughs from which winter had swept all signs of life months ago.

In a very lovely little room, facing a park where the glitter of a tiny lake could be seen, 'Tana lounged and stared at the waving branches and the fettered water.

Not just the same 'Tana as when, a year ago, she had breasted the cold waves of the Kootenai. No one, to look at her now, would connect the taller, stylishly dressed figure, with that little half-savage who had scowled at Overton in the lodge of Akkomi. Her hair was no longer short and boyish in its arrangement. A silver comb held it in place, except where the tiny curls crept down to cl.u.s.ter about her neck. A gown of soft white wool was caught at her waist by a flat woven belt of silver, and an embroidered shoe of silvery gleam peeped from under the white folds.

No, it was not the same 'Tana. And the little gray-haired lady, who slipped ivory knitting needles in and out of silky flosses, watched her with troubled concern as she asked:

"And what do you intend to make of your life, Montana?"

"You are out of patience with me, are you not, Miss Seldon?" asked the girl. "Oh, yes, I know you are; and I don't blame you. Everything I have ever wanted in my life is in reach of me here--everything a girl should have; yet it doesn't mean so much to me as I thought it would."

"But if you would go to school, perhaps--"

"Perhaps I would learn to appreciate all this," and the girl glanced around at the fine fittings of the room, and then back to the point of her own slipper.

"But I do study hard at home. Doesn't Miss Ackerman give me credit for learning very quickly? and doesn't that music teacher hop around and wave his hands over my most excellent, ringing voice? They say I study well."

"Yes, yes; you do, too. But at a school, my dear, where you would have the a.s.sociation of other girls, you would naturally grow more--more girlish yourself, if I may say so; for you are old beyond your years in ways that are peculiar. Your ideas of things are not the ideas of girlhood; and yet you are very fond of girls."

"And how do you know that?" asked 'Tana.

"Why, my dear, you never go past one on the street that you don't give her more notice than the very handsomest man you might see. And at the matinees, if the play does not hold you very close, your eyes are always directed to the young girls in the audience. Yes, you are fond of them, yet you will not allow yourself to be intimate with any."

And the pretty, refined-looking lady smiled at her and nodded her head in a knowing way, as though she had made an important discovery.

The girl on the couch lay silent for a while, then she rose and went over to the window, gazing across to the park, where people were walking and riding along the green knolls and levels. Young girls were there, too, and she watched them a little while, with the old moody expression in her dark eyes.

"Perhaps it is because I don't like to make friends under false pretenses," she said, at last. "Your society is a very fine and very curious thing, and there is a great deal of false pretense about it.

Individually, they would overlook the fact that I was accused of murder in Idaho--the gold mine would help some of them to do that! But if it should ever get in their papers here, they would collectively think it their duty to each other not to recognize me."

"Oh, Montana, my dear child, why do you not forget that horrible life, and leave your mind free to partake of the advantages now surrounding you?"

and Miss Seldon sighed with real distress, and dropped her ivory needles despairingly. "It seems so strange that you care to remember that which was surely a terrible life."

"Much more so than you can know," answered the girl, coming over to her and drawing a velvet ha.s.sock to her side. "And, my dear, good, innocent little lady, just so long as you all try to persuade me that I should go out among young people of my own age, just so long must I be forced to think of how different my life has been to theirs. Some day they, too, might learn how different it has been, and resent my presence among them.

I prefer not to run that risk. I might get to like some of them, and then it would hurt. Besides, the more I see of people since I came here, the more I feel that every one should remain with their own cla.s.s in life."

"But, Montana, that is not an American sentiment at all!" said Miss Seldon, with some surprise. "But even that idea should not exclude from refined circles. By birth you are a lady."

The girl smiled bitterly. "You mean my mother was," she answered. "But she did not give me a gentleman for a father; and I don't believe the parents of any of those lovely girls we meet would like them to know the daughter of such a man, if they knew it. Now, do you understand how I feel about myself and this social question?"

"You are foolishly conscientious and morbid," exclaimed the older lady. "I declare, Montana, I don't know what to do with you. People like you--you are very clever, you have youth, wealth, and beauty--yes, the last, too!

yet you shut yourself up here like a young nun. Only the theaters and the art galleries will you visit--never a person--not even Margaret."

"Not even Margaret," repeated the girl; "and that is the crowning sin in your eyes, isn't it? Well, I don't blame you, for she is very lovely; and how much she thinks of you!"

"Yes!" sighed the little lady. "Mrs. Haydon is a woman of very decided character, but not at all given to loving demonstrations to children. Long ago, when we lived closer, little Margie would come to me daily to be kissed and petted. Max was only a boy then, and they were great companions."

"Yes; and if he had been sensible, he would have fallen in love with her and made her Mrs. Lyster, instead of knocking around Western mining towns, and making queer friends," said the girl, smiling at the old lady's astonished face. "She is just the sort of girl to suit him."

"My dear," she said, solemnly, "do you really care for him a particle?"