That Girl Montana

“Are you?” asked Mrs. Huzzard, dryly. “Well, Mr. Max, so long as I’ve known her, I’ve always found ’Tana makes her own determinations – and sticks to them, too.”

“I’m glad to be reminded of that,” he retorted, “for she promised me yesterday to marry me some time.”

“Bless my soul!”

“If she didn’t change her mind,” he added, laughingly.

“To marry you! Well, well, well!” and she stared at him so queerly, that a shade of irritation crossed his face.

“Why not?” he asked. “Don’t you think that a plain, ordinary man is good enough for your wild-flower of the Kootenai hills?”

“Oh, you’re not plain at all, Mr. Max Lyster,” she returned, “and I’ll go bail many a woman who is smarter than either ’Tana or me has let you know it! It ain’t the plainness – it’s the difference. And – well, well! you know you’ve been quarreling ever since you met.”

“But that is all over now,” he promised; “and haven’t you a good wish for us?”

“Indeed I have, then – a many of them, but you have surprised me. I used to think that’s how it would end; and then – well, then, a different notion got in my head. Now that it’s settled, I do hope you will be happy. Bless the child! I’ll go and tell her so this minute.”

“No,” he said, quickly, “let her and Dan have their talk out – if she will talk to him. That fever left her queer in some things, and one of them is her avoidance of Dan. She hasn’t been free and friendly with him as she used to be, and it is too bad; for he is such a good fellow, and would do anything for her.”

“Yes, he would,” assented Mrs. Huzzard.

“And she will be her own spirited self in a few weeks – when she gets away from here – and gets stronger. She’ll appreciate Dan more after a while, for there are few like him. And so – as she is to go away so soon, I hope something will put them on their former confidential footing. Maybe this murder will be the something.”

“You are a good friend, Mr. Max,” said the woman, slowly, “and you deserve to be a lucky lover. I’m sure I hope so.”

Within the cabin, those two of whom they spoke stood together beside the dead outlaw, and their words were low – so low that the paralyzed man in the next room listened in vain.

“And you believed that of me – of me?” he asked, and she answered, falteringly:

“How did I know? You said – you threatened – you would kill him – any man you found in here. So, when he was here dead, I – did not know.”

“And you thought I had stuck that knife in him and left?”

She nodded her head.

“And you thought,” he continued, in a voice slightly tremulous, “that you were giving me a chance to escape just so long as you let them suspect – you?”

She did not answer, but turned toward the door. He held his arm out and barred her way.

“Only a moment!” he said, pleadingly. “It never can be that – that I would be anything to you, little girl – never, never! But – just once – let me tell you a truth that shall never hurt you, I swear! I love you! No other word but that will tell your dearness to me. I – I never would have said it, but – but what you risked for me has broken me down. It has told me more than your words would tell me, and I – Oh, God! my God!”

She shrank from the passion in his words and tone, but the movement only made him catch her arm and hold her there. Tears were in his eyes as he looked at her, and his jaws were set firmly.

“You are afraid of me – of me?” he asked. “Don’t be. Life will be hard enough now without leaving me that to remember. I’m not asking a word in return from you; I have no right. You will be happy somewhere else – and with some one else – and that is right.”

He still held her wrist, and they stood in silence. She could utter no word; but her mouth trembled and she tried to smother a sob that arose in her throat.

But he heard it.

“Don’t!” he said, almost in a whisper – “for God’s sake, don’t cry. I can’t stand that – not your tears. Here! be brave! Look up at me, won’t you? See! I don’t ask you for a word or a kiss or a thought when you leave me – only let me see your eyes! Look at me!”

What he read in her trembling lips and her shrinking, shamed eyes made him draw his breath hard through his shut teeth.

“My brave little girl!” he said softly. “You will think harshly of me for this some day – if you ever know – know all. But what you did this morning made a coward of me – that and my longing for you. Try to forgive me. Or, no – you had better not. And when you are his wife – Oh, it’s no use – I can’t think or speak of that – yet. Good-by, little girl – good-by!”

CHAPTER XXIV.

LEAVING CAMP

Afterward, ’Tana never could remember clearly the incidents of the few days that followed. Only once more she entered the cabin of death, and that was when Mr. Haydon and Mr. Seldon returned with all haste to the camp, after meeting with Captain Leek and the Indian boatman.

Then, as some of the men offered to go with them to view the remains of the outlaw, she came forward.

“No. I will take them,” she said.

When Mr. Haydon demurred, feeling that a young girl should be kept as much as possible from such scenes, she had laid her hand on Seldon’s arm.

“Come!” she said, and they went with her.

But when inside the door, she did not approach the blanket-covered form stretched on the couch; only pointed toward it, and stood herself like a guard at the entrance.

When Seldon lifted the Indian blanket from the face, he uttered a startled exclamation, and looked strangely at her. She never turned around.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Haydon.

No one replied, and as he looked with anxiety toward the form there, his face grew ashen in its horror.

“Lord in heaven!” he gasped; “first her on that bed and now him! I – I feel as if I was haunted in this camp. Seldon, is it – is it – ”

“No mistake possible,” answered the other man, decidedly. “I could swear to the identity. It is George Rankin!”

“And Holly, the renegade!” added Haydon, in consternation; “and Lord only knows how many other aliases he has worn. Oh, what a sensation the papers would make over this if they got hold of it all. My! my! it would be awful! And that girl, Montana, as she calls herself, she has been clever to keep it quiet as she has, for – Oh, Lord!”

“What is the matter now? You look fairly sick,” said the other, impatiently. “I didn’t fancy you’d grieve much over his death.”

“No, it isn’t that,” said Haydon, huskily. “But that girl – don’t you see she was accused of this? And – well seeing who he is, how do we know – ”

He stopped awkwardly, unable to continue with the girl herself so near and with Seldon’s warning glance directed to him.

She leaned against the wall, and apparently had not heard their words. Seldon’s face softened as he looked at her; and, going over, he put his hand kindly on her hair.

“I am going to be your uncle, now,” he said in a caressing tone. “You have kept up like a soldier under some terrible things here; but we will try to make things brighter for you now.”

She smiled in a dreary way without looking at him. His knowledge of the terrible things she had endured seemed to her very limited.

“And you will go now with us – with Mr. Haydon – back to your mother’s old home, won’t you?” he said, in a persuasive way. “It is not good, you know, for a little girl not to know any of her relations, or to bear such shocking grudges,” he added, in a lower tone.

But she gave him no answering smile.

“I will go to your house if you will have me,” she said. “You and Max are my friends. I will go only with people I like.”

“You know, my dear,” said Mr. Haydon, who heard her last words. “You know I offered you a home in my house until such time as you got to school, and – and of course, I’ll stick to it.”

“Though you are a little afraid to risk it, aren’t you?” she asked, with an unpleasant smile. “Haven’t you an idea that I might murder you all in your beds some fine night? You know I belong to a country where they do such things for pastime. Aren’t you afraid?”

“That is a very horrible sort of pleasantry,” he answered, and moved away from the dead face he had been staring at. “I beg you will not indulge in it, especially when you move in a society more refined than these mining camps can afford. It will be a disadvantage to you if you carry with you customs and memories of this unfinished section. And after all, you do not belong here, your family was of the East. When you go back there, it would be policy for you to forget that you had ever lived anywhere else.”

Mr. Haydon had never made so long a speech to her before, and it was delivered with a certain persistence, as if it was a matter of conscience he would be relieved to have off his mind.

“I think you are mistaken when you say I do not belong here,” she answered, coolly. “Some of my family have been a good many things I don’t intend to be. I was born in Montana; and I might have starved to death for any help my ’family’ would have given me, if I hadn’t struck luck and helped myself here in Idaho. So I think I belong out here, and if I live, I will come back again – some day.”

She turned to Seldon and pointed to the dead form.

“They will take him away to-day – I heard them say so,” she said quietly. “Let it be somewhere away from the camp – not near – not where I can see.”

“Can’t you forget – even now, ’Tana?”

“Does anybody ever forget?” she asked. “When people say they can forget and forgive, I don’t trust them, for I don’t believe them.”

“Have you any idea who killed him?” he asked. “It is certainly a strange affair. I thought you might suspect some one these people know nothing of.”

But she shook her head. “No,” she said. “There were several who would have liked to do it, I suppose – people he had wronged or ruined; for he had few friends left, or he would not have come across to these poor reds to hide. Give old Akkomi part of that gold; he was faithful to me – and to him, too. No, I don’t know who did it. I don’t care, now. I thought I knew once; but I was wrong. This way of dying is better than the rope; and that is what the law would have given him. He would have chosen this – I know.”

“Did you ever in your life hear such cold-blooded words from a girl?” demanded Haydon, when she left them and went to Harris. “Afraid of her? Humph! Well, some people would be. No wonder they suspected her when she showed such indifference. Every word she says makes me regret more and more that I acknowledged her. But how was I to know? She was ill, and made me feel as if a ghost had come before me. I couldn’t sleep till I had made up my mind to take the risk of her. Max sung her praises as if she was some rare untrained genius. Nothing gave me an idea that she would turn out this way.”

“‘This way’ has not damaged you much so far,” remarked Mr. Seldon, dryly. “And as she is not likely to be much of a charge on your hands, you had better not borrow trouble on that score.”

“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 Slocum. 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 cluster 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 association 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 hassock 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 class 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?”

“Who – Max? Of course I do. He is the best fellow I know, and was so good to me out there in the wilderness. There was no one out there to compare me with, so I suppose I loomed up big when compared with the average squaw. But everything is different here. I did not know how different. I know now, however, and I won’t let him go on making a mistake.”

“Oh, Montana!” cried the little lady, pleadingly.

Just then a maid entered with two cards, at which she glanced with a dismay that was comical.

“Margaret and Max! Why, is it not strange they should call at the same time, and at a time when – ”

“When I was pairing them off so nicely, without their knowledge,” added the girl. “Have them come up here, won’t you? It is so much more cozy than that very elegant parlor. And I always feel as if poor Max had been turned out of his home since I came.”

So they came to the little sitting room – pretty, dark-eyed Margaret, with her faultless manners and her real fondness for Miss Seldon, whom she kissed three times.

“For I have not seen you for three days,” she explained, “and those two are back numbers.” Then she turned to ’Tana and eyed her admiringly as they clasped hands.

“You look as though you had stepped from a picture of classic Greek,” she declared. “Where in that pretty curly head of yours do you find the ideas for those artistic arrangements of form and color? You are an artist, Montana, and you don’t know it.”

“I will begin to believe it if people keep telling me so.”

“Who else has told you?” asked Lyster, and she laughed at him.

“Not you,” she replied; “at least not since you teased me about the clay Indians I made on the shores of the Kootenai. But some one else has told me – Mr. Roden.”

“Roden, the sculptor! But how does he know?”

She glanced from one face to the other, and sighed with a serio-comic expression. “I might as well confess,” she said, at last. “I am so glad you are here, Miss Margaret, for I may need an advocate. I have been working two hours a day in Mr. Roden’s studio for over a month.”

“Montana!” gasped Miss Seldon, “but – how – when?”

“Before you were awake in the morning,” she said, and looked from one to the other of their blank faces. “You look as if it were a shock, instead of a surprise,” she added. “I did not tell you at first, as it would seem only a whim. But he has told me I have reason for the whim, and that I should continue. So – I think I shall.”

“But, my child – for you are a child, after all – don’t you know it is a very strange thing for a girl to go alone like that, and – and – Oh, dear! Max, can’t you tell her?”

But Max did not. There was a slight wrinkle between his brows, but she saw it and smiled.

“You can’t scold me, though, can you?” she asked. “That is right, for it would be no use. I know you would say that in your set it would not be proper for a girl to do such independent things. But you see, I do not belong to any set. I have just been telling this dear little lady, who is trying to look stern, some of the reasons why society life and I can never agree. But I have found several reasons why Art life and I should agree perfectly. I like the freedom of it – the study of it. And, even if I never accomplish much, I shall at least have tried my best.”

“But, Montana, it is not as though you had to learn such things,” pleaded Miss Seldon. “You have plenty of money.”

“Oh, money – money! But I have found there are a few things in this world money can not buy. Art study, little as I have attempted, has taught me that.”