Told In The Hills Part 35

"I'm so glad you've come!" she breathed gratefully. "He has me so nervous I can't count six; and Mrs. Hardy is taking a nap, and Aunty Luce has locked herself upstairs, and I never was stared so out of countenance in my life."

"I rather think that's a phase of Indian courtship," Rachel comforted her by saying; "so you have won a new admirer. What is it Kalitan?"

He signified that his business was with the "Man-who-laughs," the term by which he designated Stuart.

"Mr. Stuart left the house just after you did," said Fred; "I thought, perhaps, to catch you."

"No, he didn't go my way. Well, you look comfortable, Kalitan; and if you had the addition of another crazy-patch cushion for your left elbow, you might stand a little longer wait--think so?"

Kalitan thought he could; and there he remained until Stuart arrived, flushed and rather breathless from his ride from somewhere.

"I was out on the road, but did not see you," said Rachel, on his entrance.

"This is likely enough," he answered. "I didn't want you to--or anyone else. I'm not good company of late. I was trying to ride away from myself." Then he saw Kalitan, propped among the cushions. "Well," he said sharply; "what have you brought me?"

Kalitan answered by no word, but thrust his hand inside his hunting-shirt and brought forth an envelope, which he gave into the eager hands reaching for it.

Stuart gave it one quick glance, turning it in his hand to examine both sides, and then dropped it in his pocket and sat down by the window.

Rachel could see it was a thick, well-filled envelope, and that the shape was the same used by Stuart himself, very large and perfectly square--a style difficult to duplicate in the Kootenai hills.

"You can go now, if you choose, Kalitan," she said, fearing his ease would induce him to stay all night, and filled with a late alarm at the idea of Tillie getting her eyes on the peaceful "hostile" and her gorgeous cushions; and without any further notice of Stuart, Kalitan took his leave.

When Rachel re-entered the room, a moment later, a letter was crisping into black curls in the fire-place, and the man sat watching it moodily.

All that evening there was scarcely question or answer to be had from Stuart. He sat by the fire, with Miss Margaret in his arms--her usual place of an evening; and through the story-telling and jollity he sat silent, looking, Jim said, as if he was "workin' hard at thinkin'."

"To-morrow night you must tell us a story," said Miss Fred, turning to him. "You have escaped now for--oh, ever so many nights."

"I am afraid my stock is about exhausted."

"Out of the question! The flimsiest of excuses," she decided. "Just imagine a new one, and tell it us instead of writing it; or tell us the one you are writing at now."

"Well, we will see when to-morrow comes;" and with that vague proposal Miss Fred had to be content.

When the morrow came Stuart looked as if there had been no night for him--at least no sleep; and Rachel, or even MacDougall himself, would not think of calling him Prince Charlie, as of old.

She was no longer so curious about him and that other man who was antagonistic to him. She had been fearful, but whatever knowledge they had of each other she had decided would not mean harm; the quiet days that had pa.s.sed were a sort of guarantee of that.

Yet they seemed to have nerved Stuart up to some purpose, for the morning after the burning of the letter he appeared suddenly at the door of Genesee's shack, or the one Major Dreyer had turned over to him during his own absence.

From the inside Kalitan appeared, as if by enchantment, at the sound of a hand on the latch. Stuart, with a gesture, motioned him aside, and evidently to Kalitan's own surprise, he found himself stepping out while the stranger stepped in. For perhaps a minute the Indian stood still, listening, and then, no sounds of hostilities coming to his ears, an expressive gutteral testified to his final acquiescence, and he moved away. His hesitation showed that Rachel had not been the only one to note the bearing of those two toward each other.

Had he listened a minute longer, he might have heard the peace within broken by the voices that, at first suppressed and intense, rose with growing earnestness.

The serious tones of Stuart sounded through the thin board walls in expostulation, and again as if urging some point that was granted little patience; for above it the voice of Genesee broke in, all the mellowness gone from it, killed by the brutal harshness, the contemptuous derision, with which he answered some plea or proposition.

"Oh, you come to me now, do you?" he said, walking back and forth across the room like some animal fighting to keep back rage with motion, if one can imagine an animal trying to put restraint on itself; and at every turn his smoldering, sullen gaze flashed over the still figure inside the door, and its manner, with a certain calm steadfastness of purpose, not to be upset by anger, seemed to irritate him all the more.

"So you come this time to lay out proposals to me, eh? And think, after all these years, that I'm to be talked over to what you want by a few soft words? Well, I'll see you d.a.m.ned first; so you can strike the back trail as soon as you've a mind to."

"I shan't go back," said Stuart deliberately, "until I get what I came for."

The other answered with a short, mirthless laugh.

"Then you're located till doomsday," he retorted, "and doomsday in the afternoon; though I reckon that won't be much punishment, considering the attractions you manage to find up here, and the advantages you carry with you--a handsome face, a gentleman's manners and an honest name.

Why, you are begging on a full hand, Mister; and what are you begging to? A man that's been about as good as dead for years--a man without any claim to a name, or to recognition by decent people--an outlaw from civilization."

"Not so bad as that, Jack," broke in Stuart, who was watching in a sort of misery the harsh self-condemnation in the restless face and eyes of Genesee. "Don't be so bitter as that on yourself. You are unjust--don't I know?"

"The h.e.l.l you say!" was the withering response to this appeal, as if with the aid of profanity to destroy the implied compliment to himself.

"Your opinion may go for a big pile among your fine friends, but it doesn't amount to much right here. And you'd better beat a retreat, sir.

The reputation of the highly respected Charles Stuart, the talented writer, the honorable gentleman, might get some dirty marks across it if folks knew he paid strictly private visits to Genesee Jack, a renegade squaw man; and more still if they guessed that he came for a favor--that's what you called it when you struck the shack, I believe. A favor! It has taken you a good while to find that name for it."

"No, it has not, Jack," and the younger man's earnestness of purpose seemed to rise superior to the taunts and sarcasm of the other. "It was so from the first, when I realized--after I knew--I didn't seem to have thoughts for anything else. It was a sort of justice, I suppose, that made me want them when I had put it out of my power to reach them. You don't seem to know what it means, Jack, but I--I am homesick for them; I have been for years, and now that things have changed so for me, I--Jack, for G.o.d's sake, have some feeling! and realize that other men can have!"

Jack turned on him like a flash.

"You--you say that to me!" he muttered fiercely.

"You, who took no count of anybody's feelings but your own, and thought G.o.d Almighty had put the best things on this earth for you to use and destroy! Killing lives as sure as if they'd never drawn another breath, and forgetting all about it with the next pretty face you saw! If that is what having a stock of feeling leads a man to, I reckon we're as well off without any such extras."

Stuart had sat down on a camp-stool, his face buried in his hands, and there was a long silence after Genesee's bitter words, as he stood looking at the bent head with an inexplicable look in his stormy eyes.

Then his visitor arose.

"Jack," he said with the same patience--not a word of retort had come from him--"Jack, I've been punished every day since. I have tried to forget it--to kill all memory by every indulgence and distraction in my reach--pursued forgetfulness so eagerly that people have thought me still chasing pleasure. I turned to work, and worked hard, but the practice brought to my knowledge so many lives made wretched as--as--well, I could not stand it. The heart-sickness it brought me almost drove me melancholy mad. The only bright thing in life was--the children--"

An oath broke from Genesee's lips.

"And then," continued Stuart, without any notice save a quick closing of the eyes as if from a blow, "and then they died--both of them. That was justice, too, no doubt, for they stayed just long enough to make themselves a necessity to me--a solace--and to make me want what I have lost. I am telling you this because I want you to know that I have had things to try me since I saw you last, and that I've come through them with the conviction that there is to be no content in life to me until I make what amends I can for the folly of the boy you knew. The thought has become a monomania with me. I hunted for months for you, and never found a trace. Then I wrote--there."

"You did!"

"Yes, I did--say what you please, do what you please. It was my only hope, and I took it. I told her I was hunting for you--and my purpose.

In return I got only this," and he handed toward Genesee a sheet of paper with one line written across it. "You see--your address, nothing more. But, Jack, can't you see it would not have been sent if she had not wished--"

"That's enough!" broke in the other. "I reckon I've given you all the time I have to spare this morning, Mister. You're likely to strike better luck in some different direction than talking sentiment and the state of your feelings to me. I've been acquainted with them before--pretty much--and don't recollect that the effect was healthy."

"Jack, you will do what I ask?"

"Not this morning, sonny," answered the other, still with that altogether aggressive taunt in his tone. "I would go back to the ranch if I was you, and by this time to-morrow some of them may make you forget the favor you want this morning. So long!"

And with this suggestion to his guest to vacate, he turned his back, sat down by the fire, and began filling a pipe.

"All right; I'll go, and in spite of your stubbornness, with a lighter heart than I carried here, for I've made you understand that I want to make amends, and that I have not been all a liar; that I want to win back the old faith you all had in me; and, Jack, if my head has gone wrong, something in my heart forbade me to have content, and that has been my only hope for myself. For I have a hope, and a determination, Jack, and as for anyone helping me to forget--well, you are wrong there; one woman might do it--for a while--I acknowledge that, but I am safe in knowing she would rather help me to remember."

Genesee wheeled about quickly.

"Have you dared--"