And remembering those days, though so long past, the old squaw was sorely averse to the adoption dance for the white girl who lay on their blankets, and thought it good, indeed, that she go to live in the villages of the white people.
Overton nodded gravely.
“You speak wisely, Akkomi,” he said.
Glancing at the girl, Dan noted that she was leaning forward and gazing at him intently. Her face gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she perhaps knew what they were talking of, but she dropped back into the shadows again, and he dismissed the idea as improbable, for white girls were seldom versed in the lore of Indian jargon.
He waited a bit for Akkomi to continue, but as that dignitary evidently thought he had said enough, if Overton chose to interpret it correctly, the white man asked:
“Would it please Akkomi that I, Dan, should lead the young squaw where white families are?”
“Yes. It is that I thought of when I heard your name. I am old. I cannot take her. She has come a long way on a trail for that which has not been found, and her heart is so heavy she does not care where the next trail leads her. So it seems to Akkomi. But she saved the son of my daughter, and I would wish good to her. So, if she is willing, I would have her go to your people.”
“If she is willing!” Overton doubted it, and thought of the scowl with which she had answered him before. After a little hesitation, he said: “It shall be as you wish. I am very busy now, but to serve one who is your friend I will take time for a few days. Do you know the girl?”
“I know her, and her father before her. It was long ago, but my eyes are good. I remember. She is good – girl not afraid.”
“Father! Where is her father?”
“In the grave blankets – so she tells me.”
“And her name – what is she called?”
But Akkomi was not to be stripped of all his knowledge by questions. He puffed at the pipe in silence and then, as Overton was as persistently quiet as himself, he finally said:
“The white girl will tell to you the things she wants you to know, if she goes with your people. If she stays here, the lodge of Akkomi has a blanket for her.”
The girl was now face downward on the couch of skins, and when Overton wished to speak to her he crossed over and gently touched her shoulder. He was almost afraid she was weeping, because of the position; but when she raised her head he saw no signs of tears.
“Why do you come to me?” she demanded. “I ain’t troubling the white folks any. Huh! I didn’t even stop at their camp across the river.”
The grunt of disdain she launched at him made him smile. It was so much more like that of an Indian than a white person, yet she was white, despite all the red manners she chose to adopt.
“No, I reckon you didn’t stop at the white camp, else I’d have heard of it. But as you’re alone in this country, don’t you think you’d be better off where other white women live?”
He spoke in the kindliest tone, and she only bit her lip and shrugged her angular shoulders.
“I will see that you are left with good people,” he continued; “so don’t be afraid about that. I’m Dan Overton. Akkomi will tell you I’m square. I know where there’s a good sort of white woman who would be glad to have you around, I guess.”
“Is it your wife?” she demanded, with the same sullen, suspicious wrinkle between her brows.
His face paled ever so little and he took a step backward, as he looked at her through narrowing eyes.
“No, miss, it is not my wife,” he said, curtly, and then walked back and sat down beside the old chief. “In fact, she isn’t any relation to me, but she’s the nearest white woman I know to leave you with. If you want to go farther, I reckon I can help you. Anyway, you come along across the line to Sinna Ferry, and I feel sure you’ll find friends there.”
She looked at him unbelievingly. “She’s used to being deceived,” decided Overton, as she watched him; but he stood her gaze without flinching and smiled back at her.
“Do you live there?” she asked again, in that abrupt, uncivil way, and turned her eyes to Akkomi, as though to read his countenance as well as that of the white man, – a difficult thing, however, for the head of the old man was again shrouded in his blanket, from which only the tip of his nose and his pipe protruded.
In a far corner the squaw of Akkomi was crouched, her bead-like eyes glittering with a watchful interest, as they turned from one to the other of the speakers, and missed no tone or gesture of the two so strangely met within her tepee. Overton noticed her once, and thought what a subject for a picture Lyster would think the whole thing – at long range. He would want to view it from the door of the tepee, and not from the interior.
But the questioning eyes of the girl were turned to him, and remembering them, he said:
“Live there? Well, as much – a little more than I do anywhere else of late. I am to go there in two days; and if you are ready to go, I will take you and be glad to do it.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she protested.
He smiled, for her tone told him she was yielding.
“Oh, no – not much,” he confessed, “but you can tell me, you know.”
“I know I can, but I won’t,” she said, doggedly. “So I guess you’ll just move on down to the ferry without me. He knows, and he says I can live here if I want to. I’m tired of the white people. A girl alone is as well with the Indians. I think so, anyway, and I guess I’ll try camping with them. They don’t ask a word – only what I tell myself. They don’t even care whether I have a name; they would give me one if I hadn’t.”
“A suitable name – and a nice Indian one – for you would be, ’The Water Rat’ or ’The Girl Who Swims.’ Maybe,” he added, “they will hunt you up one more like poetry in books (the only place one finds poetry in Indians), ’Laughing Eyes,’ or ’The One Who Smiles.’ Oh, yes, they’ll find you a name fast enough. So will I, if you have none. But you have, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have, and it’s ’Tana,” said the girl, piqued into telling by the humorous twinkle in the man’s eyes.
“’Tana? Why, that itself is an Indian name, is it not? And you are not Indian.”
“It’s ’Tana, for short. Montana is my name.”
“It is? Well, you’ve got a big name, little girl, and as it is proof that you belong to the States, don’t you think you’d better let me take you back there?”
“I ain’t going down among white folks who will turn up their noses at me, just because you found me among these redskins,” she answered, scowling at him and speaking very deliberately. “I know how proud decent women are, and I ain’t going among any other sort and that’s settled.”
“Why, you poor little one, what sort of folks have you been among?” he asked, compassionately. Her stubborn antagonism filled him with more of pity than tears could have done; it showed so much suspicion, that spoke of horrible associations, and she was so young!
“See here! No one need know I found you among the Indians. I can make up some story – say you’re the daughter of an old partner of mine. It’ll be a lie, of course, and I don’t approve of lies. But if it makes you feel better, it goes just the same! Partner dies, you know, and I fall heir to you. See? Then, of course, I pack you back to civilization, where you can – well, go to school or something. How’s that?”
She did not answer, only looked at him strangely, from under those straight brows. He felt an angry impatience with her that she did not take the proposal differently, when it was so plainly for her good he was making schemes.
“As to your father being dead – that part of it would be true enough, I suppose,” he continued; “for Akkomi told me he was dead.”
“Yes – yes, he is dead,” she said coldly, and her tones were so even no one would imagine it was her father she spoke of.
“Your mother, too?”
“My mother, too,” she assented. “But I told you I wasn’t going to talk any more about myself, and I ain’t. If I can’t go to your Sunday-school without a pedigree, I’ll stop where I am – that’s all.”
She spoke with the independence of a boy, and it was, perhaps, her independence that induced the man to be persistent.
“All right, ’Tana,” he said cheerfully. “You come along on your own terms, so long as you get out of these quarters. I’ll tell the dead partner story – only the partner must have a name, you know. Montana is a good name, but it is only a half one, after all. You can give me another, I reckon.”
She hesitated a little and stared at the glowing embers of the lodge fire. He wondered if she was deciding to tell him a true one, or if she was trying to think of a fictitious one.
“Well?” he said at last.
Then she looked up, and the sullen, troubled, unchildlike eyes made him troubled for her sake.
“Rivers is a good name – Rivers?” she asked, and he nodded his head, grimly.
“That will do,” he agreed. “But you give it just because you were baptized in the river this evening, don’t you?”
“I guess I give it because I haven’t any other I intend to be called by,” she answered.
“And you will cut loose from this outfit?” he asked. “You will come with me, little girl, across there into God’s country, where you must belong.”
“You won’t let them look down on me?”
“If any one looks down on you, it will be because of something you will do in the future, ’Tana,” he said, looking at her very steadily. “Understand that, for I will settle it that no one knows how I came across you. And you will go?”
“I – will go.”
“Come, now! that’s a good decision – the best you could have made, little girl; and I’ll take care of you as though you were a cargo of gold. Shake hands on the agreement, won’t you?”
She held out her hand, and the old squaw in the corner grunted at the symbol of friendship. Akkomi watched them with his glittering eyes, but made no sign.
It surely was a strange beginning to a strange friendship.
“You poor little thing!” said Overton, compassionately, as she half shrank from the clasp of his fingers. The tender tone broke through whatever wall of indifference she had built about her, for she flung herself face downward on the couch, and sobbed passionately, refusing to speak again, though Overton tried in vain to calm her.
CHAPTER III.
THE IMAGE-MAKER
The world was a night older ere Dan Overton informed Lyster that they would have an addition of one to their party when they continued their journey into the States.
On leaving the village of Akkomi but little conversation was to be had from Dan. In vain did his friend endeavor to learn something of the white squaw who swam so well. He simply kept silence, and looked with provoking disregard on all attempts to surprise him into disclosures.
But when the camp breakfast was over, and he had evidently thought out his plan of action, he told Lyster over the sociable influence of a pipe, that he was going over to the camp of Akkomi again.
“The fact, is, Max, that the girl we saw yesterday is to go across home with us. She’s a ward of mine.”
“What!” demanded Max, sitting bolt upright in his amazement, “a ward of yours? You say that as though you had several scattered among the tribes about here. So it is a Kootenai Pocahontas! What good advice was it you gave me yesterday about keeping clear of Selkirk Range females? And now you are deliberately gathering one to yourself, and I will be the unnecessary third on our journey home. Dan! Dan! I wouldn’t have thought it of you!”
Overton listened in silence until the first outburst was over.
“Through?” he asked, carelessly; “well, then, it isn’t a Pocahontas; it isn’t an Indian at all. It is only a little white girl whose father was – was an old partner. Well, he’s gone ‘over the range’ – dead, you know – and the girl is left to hustle for herself. Naturally, she heard I was in this region, and as none of her daddy’s old friends were around but me, she just made her camp over there with the Kootenais, and waited till I reached the river again. She’ll go with me down to Sinna; and if she hasn’t any other home in prospect, I’ll just locate her there with Mrs. Huzzard, the milliner-cook, for the present. Now, that’s the story.”
“And a very pretty little one it is, too,” agreed Mr. Max. “For a backwoodsman, who is not supposed to have experience, it is very well put together. Oh, don’t frown like that! I’ll believe she’s your granddaughter, if you say so,” and he laughed in wicked enjoyment at Overton’s flushed face. “It’s all right, Dan. I congratulate you. But I wouldn’t have thought it.”
“I suppose, now,” remarked Dan, witheringly, “that by all these remarks and giggles you are trying to be funny. Is that it? Well, as the fun of it is not visible to me yet, I’ll just keep my laughter till it is. In the meantime, I’m going over to call on my ward, Miss Rivers, and you can hustle for funny things around camp until I come back.”
“Oh, say, Dan, don’t be vindictive. Take me along, won’t you? I’ll promise to be good – ’pon honor I will. I’ll do penance for any depraved suspicions I may have indulged in. I’ll – I’ll even shake hands again with Black Bow, there! Beyond that, I can think of no more earnest testimony of repentance.”
“I shall go by myself,” decided Overton. “So make a note of it, if you see the young lady before to-morrow, it will be because she specially requests it. Understand? I’m not going to have her bothered by people who are only curious; not but that she can take her own part, as you’ll maybe learn later. But she was too upset to talk much last night. So I’ll go over and finish this morning, and in the meantime, this side of the river is plenty good enough for you.”
“Is it?” murmured Mr. Lyster, as he eyed the stalwart form of the retreating guardian, who was so bent on guarding. “Well, it would do my heart good, anyway, to fasten another canoe right alongside of yours where you land over there, and I shouldn’t be surprised if I did it.”
Thus it happened that while Overton was skimming upward across the river, his friend, on mischief bent, was getting a canoe ready to launch. A few minutes after Overton had disappeared toward the Indian village, the second canoe danced lightly over the Kootenai, and the occupant laughed to himself, as he anticipated the guardian’s surprise.
“Not that I care in the least about seeing the dismal damsel he has to look after,” mused Lyster. “In fact, I’m afraid she’ll be a nuisance, and spoil our jolly good time all the way home. But he is so refreshingly earnest about everything. And as he doesn’t care a snap for girls in general, it is all the more amusing that it is he who should have a charge of that sort left on his hands. I’d like to know what she looks like. Common, I dare say, for the ultra refined do not penetrate these wilds to help blaze trails; and she swam like a boy.”
When he reached the far shore, no one was in sight. With satisfied smiles, he fastened his canoe to that of Overton, and then cast about for some place to lie in wait for that selfish personage and surprise him on his return.
He had no notion of going up to the village, for he wanted only to keep close enough to trace Overton. Hearing children’s voices farther along the shore, he sauntered that way, thinking to see Indian games, perhaps. When he came nearer, he saw they were running races.
The contestants were running turn about, two at a time. Each victory was greeted with shrill cries of triumph. He also noticed that each victor returned to a figure seated close under some drooping bushes, and each time a hand was reached out and some little prize was given to the winner. Then, with shouts of rejoicing, a new race was planned.
As the stranger stood back of the thick bushes, watching the stretch of level beach and the half-naked, childish figures, he grew curious to see who that one person just out of sight was.
One thing at last he did discover – that the hand awarding the prizes was tanned like the hand of a boy, but that it certainly had white blood instead of red in its veins. What if it should be the ward?
Elated, and full of mischief, he crept closer. If only he could be able to give Overton a description of her when Overton came back to the canoe!
At first all he could see were the hands – hands playing with a bit of wet clay – or so it seemed to him.
Then his curiosity was more fully aroused when out of the mass a recognizable form was apparent – a crudely modeled head and shoulders of a decided Indian character.
Lyster was so close now that he could notice how small the hands were, and to see that the head bent above them was covered with short, brown, loosely curled hair, and that there was just a tinge of reddish gold on it, where the sunlight fell.
A race was just ended, and one of the little young savages trotted up where the image-maker was. The small hand was again reached out, and he could see that the prize the little Indian had raced for was a blue bead of glass. He could see, also, that the owner of the hand had the face of a girl – a girl with dark eyes, and long lashes that touched the rather pale cheeks. Her mouth was deliciously saucy, with its bow-like curve, and its clear redness. She said something he did not understand, and the children scampered away to resume the endless races, while she continued the manipulation of the clay, frowning often when it would not take the desired form.
Then one of the sharp-eyed little redskins left his companions and slipped back to her, and said something in a tone so low it was almost a whisper.
She turned at once and looked directly into the thicket, back of which Lyster stood.
“What are you watching for?” she demanded. “I don’t like people who are afraid to show themselves.”
“Well, I’ll try to change that as quickly as I can,” Lyster retorted, and circling the clump of bushes, he stood before her with his hat in his hand, looking smilingly audacious as she frowned on him.
But the frown faded as she looked; perhaps because ’Tana had never seen any one quite so handsome in all her life, or so fittingly and picturesquely dressed, for Mr. Maxwell Lyster was artist enough to make the most of his many good points and to exhibit them all with charming unconsciousness.
“I hope you will like me better here than across there,” he said, with a smile that was contagious. “You see, I was too shy to come forward at first, and then I was afraid to interrupt your modeling. It is very good.”
“You don’t look shy,” she said, combatively, and drew the clay image back, where he could not look at it. She was not at all sure that he was not laughing at her, and she covered her worn shoes with the skirt of her dress, feeling suddenly very poor and shabby in the light of his eyes. She had not felt at all like that when Overton looked at her in Akkomi’s lodge.
“You would not be so unfriendly if you knew who I am,” he ventured meekly. “Of course, I – Max Lyster – don’t amount to much, but I happen to be Dan Overton’s friend, and with your permission, I hope to continue with him to Sinna Ferry, and with you as well; for I am sure you must be Miss Rivers.”
“If you’re sure, that settles it, I suppose,” she returned. “So he – he told you about me?”
“Oh, yes; we are chums, as you will learn. Then I was so fortunate as to see your brave swim after that child yesterday. You don’t look any the worse for it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I suppose, now, you thought that little dip a welcome break in the monotony of camp-life, while you were waiting for Dan.”
She looked at him in a quick, questioning way he thought odd.
“Oh – yes. While I was waiting for – Dan,” she said in a queer tone, and bent her head over the clay image.
He thought her very interesting with her boyish air, her brusqueness, and independence. Yet, despite her savage surroundings, a certain amount of education was visible in her speech and manner, and her face had no stamp of ignorance on it.
The young Kootenais silently withdrew from their races, and gathered watchfully close to the girl. Their nearness was a discomfiting thing to Lyster, for it was not easy to carry on a conversation under their watchful eyes.
“You gave them prizes, did you not?” he asked. “How much wealth must one offer to get them to run?”
“Run where?” she returned carelessly, though quietly amused at the scrutiny of the little redskins. They were especially charmed by the glitter of gold mountings on Mr. Lyster’s watch-guard.
“Oh, run races – run anywhere,” he said.
From a pocket of her blouse she drew forth a few blue beads that yet remained.
“This is all I had to give them, and they run just as fast for one of these as they would for a pony.”
“Good enough! I’ll have some races for my own edification and comfort,” and he drew out some coins. “Will you run for this – run far over there?”
The children looked at the girl. She nodded her head, said a word or two unintelligible to him, but perfectly clear to them; for, with sharp looks at the coins and pleased yells, they leaped away to their racing.
“Now, this is more comfortable,” he said. “May I sit down here? Thanks! Now would you mind telling me whose likeness it is you are making in the clay?”
“I guess you know it’s nobody’s likeness,” she answered, and again thrust it back out of sight, her face flushing that he should thus make a jest of her poor efforts. “You’ve seen real statues, I suppose, and know how they ought to be, but you don’t need to look for them in the Purcell Range.”
“But, indeed, I am in earnest about your modeling. Won’t you believe me?” and the blue eyes looking into her own were so appealing, that she turned away her head half shyly, and a pink flush crept up from her throat. Miss Rivers was evidently not used to eyes with caressive tendencies and they disturbed her, for all her strangely unchildlike character.
“Of course, your work is only in the rough,” he continued; “but it is not at all bad, and has real Indian features. And if you have had no teaching – ”
“Huh!” and she looked at him with a mirthless smile. “Where’d any one get teaching of that sort along the Columbia River? Of course, there are some gentlemen – officers and such – about the reservations, but not one but would only laugh at such a big girl making doll babies out of mud. No, I had no teaching to do anything but read, and I did read some in a book about a sculptor, and how he made animals and people’s faces out of clay. Then I tried.”
As she grew communicative, she seemed so much more what she really was in years – a child; and he noticed, with satisfaction, that she looked at him more frankly, while the suspicion faded almost entirely from her face.
“And are you going to develop into a sculptor under Overton’s guardianship?” he asked. “You see, he has told me of his good luck.”
She made a queer little sound between a laugh and a grunt.
“I’ll bet the rest of the blue beads he didn’t call it good luck,” she returned, looking at him keenly. “Now, honest Injun – did he?”
“Honest Injun! he didn’t speak of it as either good or bad luck; simply as a matter of course, that at your father’s death you should look him up, and let him know you were alone. Oh, he is a good fellow, Dan is, and glad, I am sure, to be of use to you.”
Her lips opened in a little sigh of content, and a swift, radiant smile was given him.
“I’m right glad you say that about him,” she answered, “and I guess you know him well, too. Akkomi likes him, and Akkomi’s sharp.”
The winner of the race here trotted back for the coin, and Lyster showed another one, as an incentive for all to scatter along the beach again. It looked as though the two white people must pay for the grant of privacy on the river-bank.
Having grown more at ease with him, ’Tana resumed again the patting and pressing of the clay, using only a little pointed stick, while Lyster watched, with curiosity, the ingenious way in which she seemed to feel her way to form.
“Have you ever tried to draw?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Only to copy pictures, like I’ve seen in some papers, but they never looked right. But I want to do everything like that – to make pictures, and statues, and music, and – oh, all the lovely things there are somewhere, that I’ve never seen – never will see them, I suppose. Sometimes, when I get to thinking that I never will see them, I just get as ugly as a drunken man, and I don’t care if I never do see anything but Indians again. I get so awful reckless. Say!” she said, again with that hard, short laugh, “girls back your way don’t get wild like that, do they? They don’t talk my way either, I guess.”
“Maybe not, and few of them would be able, either, to do what we saw you do in this river yesterday,” he said kindly. “Dan is a judge of such things, you know, and he thought you very nervy.”
“Nervy? Oh, yes; I guess he’d be nervy himself if he was needed. Say! can you tell me about the camp, or settlement, at this Sinna Ferry? I never was there. He says white women are there. Do you know them?”
Lyster explained his own ignorance of the place, knowing it as he did only through Dan’s descriptions.
Then she, from her bit of Indian knowledge, told him Sinna was the old north Indian name for Beaver. Then he got her to tell him other things of the Indian country, things of ghost-haunted places and strange witcheries, with which they confused the game and the fish. He fell to wondering what manner of man Rivers, the partner of Dan, had been, that his daughter had gained such strange knowledge of the wild things. But any attempt to learn or question her history beyond yesterday was always checked in some way or other.