Told In The Hills Part 50

The Stuart's face was white as the wounded man's as the boy looked up at him, frankly.

"I'm--I'm Jack," he said; "and mamma sent a letter."

The letter was held out, and the boy's plucky mouth trembled a little at the lack of welcome; not even a hand-shake, and he was such a little fellow--about ten. But Stuart looked like a man who sees a ghost. He took the letter, after a pause that seemed very long to the people who watched his strange manner. Then he looked at the envelope, took the boy by the arm, and thrusting the Major blindly aside, he knelt by Genesee.

"This is for you, Jack," he said, motioning the others back by a gesture--all but Rachel--that hand-clasp was so strong! "and your namesake has brought it."

"Read it," and he motioned Rachel to take it; "read me Annie's letter."

She read it in a low tone--a repet.i.tion of that other plea that Jack had left with her, and its finale the same longing request that her boy should at last be let know his father. Stuart was in tears when she finished.

"Jack," he said, "ten years is a long time; I've suffered every hour of them. Give me the boy; let me know you are agreed at last. Give Annie back to me!"

Jack raised his hand to the bewildered boy, who took it reverently.

"You are Annie's boy?" he whispered; "kiss me for her--tell her--" And then his eyes sought Stuart's--"I held them in p.a.w.n for you. I reckon you're earnest enough now--to redeem them. What was that verse about--giving back the pledge when--the sun goes down? You read it.

Mother used to read it--little mother! She will be glad, I reckon--she--"

Stuart was sobbing outright, with his arms about the boy. Rachel, with the letter in her hand, was as puzzled as those who had drawn out of hearing. Only the Indians stood close and impa.s.sive. Jack, meeting her eyes, smiled.

"You know now--all about--them--and Annie. That was why I tried--to keep away from you--you know now."

But she did not know.

"You took his wife from him?" she said, in a maze of conflicting revelations; and Jack looked at Stuart, as she added, "and who were you?"

"He is my brother!" said Stuart, in answer to that look of Jack's. "He would not let me say it before--not for years. But he is my brother!"

The words were loud enough for all to hear, and there was a low chorus of surprise among the group. All concealment was about over for Genesee--even the concealment of death.

Then Stuart looked across at Rachel. He heard that speech, "You took his wife from him;" and he asked no leave of Jack to speak now.

"Don't think that of him," he said, steadily. "You have been the only one who has, blindfolded, judged him aright. Don't fail him now. He is worth all the belief you had in him. The story I read you that night was true. His was the manhood you admired in it; mine, the one you condemned. As I look back on our lives now, his seems to me one immense sacrifice--and no compensations--one terrible isolation; and now--now everything comes to him too late!"

"He is--sorry," whispered Genesee, "and talks wild--but--you know now?"

"Yes," and the girl's face had something of the solemn elation of his own. "Yes, I know now."

"And you--will live in the hills--may be?--not so very far away from--me. In my pocket--is something--from the mine--Davy will tell you.

Be good to--my Kootenais; they think--a heap of you. Kalitan!"

The Arrow came forward, and shook reverently the hand of the man who had been master to him. The eyes roved about the room, as if in search of others unseen. Rachel guessed what was wanted, and motioned to the Indians.

"Come; your brother wants you," she said. And as they grouped about him and her, they barred out the soldiers and civilians--the white brother and child--barred out all from him save his friends of the mountains and the wild places--the haunts of exiles. And the girl, as one by one they touched her hand at his request, and circled her with their dark forms, seemed to belong to them too.

"When the--snow melts--the flowers are on that ledge," he whispered with his eyes closed, "and the birds--not echoes--the echoes are in the mine--don't be--afraid. I'll go long--and Mowitza."

He was silent for so long that she stooped and whispered to him of prayer. He opened his eyes and smiled at her.

"Give me--your good wishes--and kiss me, and I'll--risk h.e.l.l," was the characteristic answer given so low that she had to watch closely the lips she kissed.

"And you've kissed me--again! Who said--no compensation?--they--don't know; we know--and the moonlight, and--yes--mother knows; she thought, at last--I was not--all bad; not all--little mother! And now--don't be afraid; I won't go--far--klahowya, my girl--my girl!"

Then one Indian from the circle unslung his rifle from his shoulder and shattered it with one blow of an axe that lay by the fire. The useless thing was laid beside what had been Genesee. And the owner, shrouding his head in his blanket, sat apart from the rest. It was he of the bear claws; the sworn friend of Lamonti, and the man who had shot him.

At sunset he was laid to rest in the little plateau on Scot's Mountain that faces the west. He was borne there by the Indians, who buried in his grave the tomahawk they had resurrected for the whites of Camp Kootenai. Mowitza, rebelliously impatient, was led riderless by Kalitan.

All military honors were paid him who had received no honors in life, the rites ending by that volley of sound that seals the grave of a soldier.

Then the pale-faces turned again to the south, the dark-faces took the trail to the north, and the sun with a last flickering blaze flooded the snow with crimson, and died behind the western peaks they had watched light up one morning.

CHAPTER IX.

"RASh.e.l.l OF LAMONTI."

The echoes are no longer silent in Tamahnous Peak. The witchcraft of silver has killed the old superst.i.tion. The "something" in Genesee's pocket had been a specimen that warranted investigation. The lost tribe had left enough ore there through the darkness of generations to make mining a thing profitable. Above those terraces of unknown origin there is a dwelling-house now, built of that same bewitched stone in which the echoes sleep; and often there is gathered under its roof a strange household.

The words of Genesee, "Be good to my Kootenais!" have so far been remembered by the girl who during the last year of his life filled his thoughts so greatly. His friends are her friends, and medley as the lot would appear to others, they are welcome to her. They have helped her solve the problem of what use she could make of her life. Her relatives have given up in despair trying to alter her unheard-of manner of living. The idea is prevalent among them that Rachel's mind, on some subjects, is really queer--she was always so erratic! They speak to her of the loneliness of those heights, and she laughs at them. She is never lonely. She had his word that he would not go far. With her lives old Davy MacDougall, who helps her much in the mining matters, and Kalitan is never far off. He is her shadow now, as he once was Genesee's. Indian women do the work of her home. A school is there for any who care to learn, and in the lodges of the Kootenais she is never forgotten.

It seemed strange that he who had so few friends in his life should win her so many by his death. The Indians speak of him now with a sort of awe, as their white brother whose counsels were so wise, whose courage was so great; he who forced from the spirits the secret of the lost mine. He has drifted into tradition as some wonderful creature who was among them for a while, disappearing at times, but always coming back at a time of their need.

To Rachel they turn as to something which they must guard--for he said so. She is to them always "Rash.e.l.l of Lamonti"--of the mountains.

From the East and South come friends sometimes--letters and faces of people who knew him; Miss Fred, and her husband, and the Major, who is a stanch friend and admirer of the eccentric girl who was once a rebel in his camp; and in reminiscences the roughness of his Kootenai chief of scouts is swathed in the gray veil of the past--only the lightning-flashes of courage are photographed in the veteran's memory.

The Stuart and his wife and boy come there sometimes in the summer; and the girl and little Jack, who are very fond of each other, ride over the places where the other Jack Stuart rode--nameless for so long.

As for Prince Charlie, his natural affection for children amounts to adoration of the boy. Rachel wonders sometimes if the ideal his remorse had fostered for so long was filled at last by the girl whom he had left a delicately tinted apple-blossom and found a delicate type of the invalid, whose ill-health never exceeds fashionable indisposition. If not, no word or sign from him shows it. The pretty, ideal phases of domestic love and life that he used to write of, are not so ready to his pen as they once were through his dreams and remorse. Much changed for him are those northern hills, but they still have a fascination for him and he writes of them a good deal.

"It is the witchcraft of the place, or else it is you, Rachel," he said, once. "Both help me. When life grows old and stale in civilization, I come up here and straightway am young again. I can understand now how you helped Jack."

His wife--a pretty little woman with a gently appealing air--never really understands Rachel, though she and Tillie are great friends; but, despite Tillie's praise, Annie never can discover what there is in the girl for "Charlie and all the other men to like so much--and even poor, dear Jack, who must have been in love with her to leave her a silver mine." To Annie she seems rather clever, but with so little affection!

and not even sympathetic, as most girls are. She heard of Rachel's pluck and bravery; but that is so near to boldness!--as heroes are to adventurers; and Annie is a very prim little woman herself. She quotes "my husband" a good deal, and rates his work with the first writers of the age.

The work has grown earnest; the lessons of Rachel's prophecy have crept into it. He has in so many ways justified them--achieved more than he hoped; but he never will write anything more fascinating than the changeless youth in his own eyes, or the serious tenderness of his own mouth when he smiles.

"Prince Charlie is a rare, fine lad," old Davy remarked at the end of an autumn, as he and Rachel watched their visitors out of sight down the valley; "a man fine enough to be brother to Genesee, an' I ne'er was wearied o' him till I hearkened to that timorous fine lady o' his lilting him into the chorus o' every song she sung. By her tellin' she's the first o' the wives that's ever had a husband."

"But she is not a fine lady at all," contradicted Rachel; "and she's a very affectionate, very good little woman. You are set against her because of that story of long ago--and that is hardly fair, Davy MacDougall."

"Well, then, I am not, la.s.s. It's little call I have to judge children, but I own I'm ower cranky when I think o' the waste o' a man's life for a bit pigeon like that--an' a man like my lad was! The prize was no'

worth the candle that give light to it. A man's life is a big thing to throw away, la.s.s, an' I see nothing in that bit o' daintiness to warrant it. To me it's a woeful waste."