That Girl Montana Part 38

"Come right in; you must be dead tired," she said, cordially. "Mr. Max, you'll let Dan know he's here, won't you--that is, when he does show up again, but no one knows how long that will be."

"Yes, I am tired," agreed the captain, meekly, and not quite at his ease with the speculative eyes of Miss Sloc.u.m on him. "I--I brought up a few letters that arrived at the Ferry. I can't make up my mind to trust mail with these Indian boatmen Dan employs."

"They are a trial," agreed Mrs. Huzzard, "though they haven't the bad effect on our nerves that one or two of the camp Indians have--an awful squaw, who helps around, and an ugly old man, who only smokes and looks horrible. Now, Lavina--she ain't used to no such, and she just s.h.i.+vers at them."

"Yes--ah--yes," murmured the captain.

"Lavina says she knew folks of your name back in Ohio," continued Mrs.

Huzzard, cheerfully, in order to get the two strangers better acquainted.

"I thought at first maybe you'd turn out to know each other; but she says they was Democrats," and she turned a sharp glance toward him, as if to read his political tendencies.

"No, I never knew any Captain Leek," said Miss Sloc.u.m, "and the ones I knew hadn't any one in the Union Army. Their principles, if they had any, were against it, and there wasn't a Republican in the family."

"Then, of course, that would settle Captain Leek belonging to them,"

decided Mrs. Huzzard, promptly. "I don't know much about politics, but as all our men folks wore the blue clothes, and fought in them, I was always glad I come from a Republican State. And I guess all the Republicans that carried guns against the Union could be counted without much arithmetic."

"I--I think I will go and look for Dan myself," observed the captain, rising and looking around a little uncertainly at Miss Sloc.u.m. "I brought some letters he may want."

He made his bow and placed the picturesque corded hat on his head as he went out. But Mrs. Huzzard looked after him somewhat anxiously.

"He's sick," she decided as he vanished from her view; "I never did see him walk so draggy like. And don't you judge his manners, either, Lavina, from this first sight of him, for he ain't himself to-day."

"He didn't look to me as though he knew who he was," remarked Lavina; and after a little she looked up from the tidy she was knitting. "So, Lorena Jane, that is the man you've been trying to educate yourself up to more than for anybody else--now, tell the truth!"

"Well, I don't mind saying that it was his good manners made me see how bad mine were," she confessed; "but as for training for him--"

"I see," said Miss Lavina, grimly, "and it is all right; but I just thought I'd ask."

Then she relapsed into deep thought, and made the needles click with impatience all that afternoon.

The captain came near the tent once, but retreated at the vision of the knitter. He talked with Mrs. Huzzard in the cabin of Harris, but did not visit her again in her own tent; and the poor woman began to wonder if the air of the Kootenai woods had an erratic influence on people. Dan was changed, 'Tana was changed, and now the captain seemed unlike himself from the very moment of his arrival. Even Lavina was a bit curt and indifferent, and Lorena Jane wondered where it would end.

In the midst of her perplexity, 'Tana added to it by appearing before her in the Indian dress Overton had presented her with. Since her sickness it had hung unused in her cabin, and the two women had fas.h.i.+oned garments more suitable, they thought, to a young girl who could wear real laces now if she chose. But there she was again, dressed like any little squaw, and although rather pale to suit the outfit, she said she wanted a few more "Indian hours" before departing for the far-off Eastern city that was to her as a new world.

She received Captain Leek with an unconcern that was discouraging to the pretty speeches he had prepared to utter.

Dan returned and looked sharply at her as she sat whittling a stick of which she said she meant to make a cane--a staff for mountain climbing.

"Where do you intend climbing?" he asked.

She waved the stick toward the hill back of them, the first step of the mountain.

"It is only a few hours since I picked you up down there, looking as if you were dead," he said, impatiently; "and you know you are not fit to tramp."

"Well, I'm not dead yet, anyway," she answered, with a shrug of her shoulders; "and as I'm going to break away from this camp about to-morrow, I thought I'd like to see a bit of the woods first."

"You--are going--to-morrow?"

"I reckon so."

"'Tana! And you have not said a word to me of it? That was not very friendly, little girl."

She did not reply, but bent her head low over her work.

After observing her for a while in silence, he arose and put on his hat.

"Here is my knife," he remarked. "You had better use it, if you are determined to haggle at that stick. Your own knife is too dull for any use. You can leave it here in the cabin when you are done with it."

She accepted it without a word, but flushed red when he had gone, and she found the eyes of Harris regarding her sadly.

"'Not very friendly,'" she said, going over Overton's words--"you think that, too--don't you? You think I'm ugly, and saucy, and awful, I know!

You look scoldings at me; but if you knew all, maybe you wouldn't--if you knew that my heart is just about breaking. I'm going out where there is no one to talk to, or I'll be crying next."

The two cousins and the captain were in 'Tana's cabin. Mrs. Huzzard was determined that Miss Sloc.u.m and the captain should become acquainted, and, getting sight of the girl, who was walking alone across the level, she at once followed her, thinking that the two left behind would perhaps become more social if left entirely to themselves. And they did; that is, they talked, and the captain spoke first.

"So you--you bear a grudge--don't you, Lavina?"

"Well, I guess if I owed you a very heavy one, I've got a good chance to pay it off now," she remarked, grimly.

He twirled his hat in a dejected way, and did not speak.

"You an officer in the Union Army?" she continued, derisively. "You a pattern of what a gentleman should be; you to set up as superior to these rough-handed miners; you to act as if this Government owes you a pension!

Why, how would it be with you, Alf Leek, if I'd tell this camp the truth of how you went away, engaged to me, twenty-five years ago, and never let me set eyes on you since--of how I wore black for you, thinking you were killed in the war, till I heard that you had deserted. I took off that mourning quick, I can tell you! I thought you were fighting on the wrong side; yet if you had a good reason for being there, you should have staid and fought so long as there was breath in you. And if I was to tell them here that you haven't a particle of right to wear that blue suit that looks like a uniform, and that you were no more 'captain' of anything than I am--well, I guess Lorena Jane wouldn't have much to say to you, though maybe Mr. Overton would."

He grew actually pale as he listened. His fear of some one overhearing her was as great as his own mortification.

"But you--you won't tell--will you, Lavina?" he said pleadingly. "I haven't done any harm! I--"

"Harm! Alf Leek, you never had enough backbone to do either harm or help to any one in this world. But don't you suppose you did me harm when you spoiled me for ever trusting any other man?"

"I--I would have come back, but I thought you'd be married," he said, in a feeble, hopeless way.

"Likely that is now, ain't it?" she demanded. And, woman-like, now that she had reduced him to meekness and humiliation, she grew a shade less severe, as if pretty well satisfied. "I had other things to think of besides a husband."

"You won't tell--will you, Lavina? I'll tell you how it all happened, some day. Then I'll leave this country."

"You'll not," she contradicted. "You'll stay right here as long as I do, and I won't tell just so long as you keep from trying to make Lorena Jane believe how great you are. But at the first word of your heroic actions, or the cultured society you were always used to--"

"You'll never hear of them," he said eagerly, "never. I knew you wouldn't make trouble, Lavina, for you always were such a good, kind-hearted girl."

He offered his hand to her, sheepishly, and she gave it a vixenish slap.

"Don't try any of your skim-milk praise on me," she said, tartly. "Huh!

You, that Lorena thought was a pillar of cultured society! When, the Lord knows, you wouldn't have known how to read the addresses on your own letters if I hadn't taught you!"

He moved to the door in a crestfallen manner, and stood there a moment, moistening his lips, and apparently swallowing words that could not be uttered.

"That's so, Lavina," he said, at last, and went out.