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"That's the worst o' the weemen folk when it comes to the hills," broke in MacDougall, "they've over easy to be frightened at shadows; a roof an' four walls is the best stoppin' place for a' o' them."

The young ranchman laughed easily.

"I don't believe you have known many of our Kentucky women, Mr. MacDougall; they are not hot-house plants, by any means."

Genesee pushed a wide-brimmed light hat back from his face a little, and for the first time joined the conversation.

"A Kentucky party, did you say, sir?" he queried, with half-careless interest.

"Yes," said Hardy, turning toward him; "relatives of mine from back East, and I wanted to give them a taste of Montana hill life, and a little hunting. But I can't go any farther into the hills alone, especially as there are three ladies in the party; and a man can't take many risks when he has them to consider."

"That's so," said Genesee, with brief sympathy; "big gang?"

"No – only six of us. My sister and her husband, and a cousin, a young lady, are the strangers. Then one of the men off my ranch who came to look after the pack-mules, and my wife and self. I have an extra horse for a guide if I can pick one up."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you could," said Genesee reflectively; "the woods are full of them, if you want Indian guides, and if you don't – well, it doesn't seem the right thing to let visitors leave the country disappointed, especially ladies, and I reckon I might take charge of your outfit for a week or so."

MacDougall nearly dropped his pipe in his surprise at the offer.

"Well, I'll be – " he began; but Genesee turned on him.

"What's the matter with that?" he asked, looking at Mac levelly, with a glance that said: "Keep your mouth shut." "If I want to turn guide and drop digging in that hill back there, why shouldn't I? It'll be the 'divarsion' you were suggesting a little while back; and if Mr. Hardy wants a guide, give me a recommend, can't you?"

"Do you know the country northwest of here?" asked Hardy eagerly. It was plain to be seen he was pleased at his "find." "Do you live here in the Chinook country? You may be a neighbor of mine, but I haven't the pleasure of knowing your name."

"That's Mac's fault," said the other fellow coolly; "he's master of ceremonies in these diggin's, and has forgotten his business. They call me Genesee Jack mostly, and I know the Kootenai hills a little."

"Indeed, then, he does Mr. Hardy," said MacDougall, finding his voice. "Ye'll find no Siwash born on the hills who knows them better than does Genesee, only he's been bewitched like, by picks and shovels an' a gulch in the Maple range, for so long it's a bit strange to see him actin' as guide; but you're a lucky man to be gettin' him, Mr. Hardy, I'll tell ye that much."

"I am willing to believe it," said Hardy frankly. "Could you start at once with us, in the morning?"

"I reckon so."

"I will furnish you a good horse," began the ranchman; but Genesee interrupted, shaking his head with a gesture of dissent.

"No, I think not," he said in the careless, musical voice that yet could be so decided in its softness; and he whistled softly, as a cricket chirrups, and the brown mare came to him with long, cat-like movements of the slender limbs, dropping her head to his shoulder.

"This bit of horse-flesh is good enough for me," he said, slipping a long, well-shaped hand over the silky cheek; "an' where I go, Mowitza goes – eh, pet?"

The mare whinnied softly as acknowledgment of the address, and Hardy noticed with admiration the fine points in her sinewy, supple frame.

"Mowitza," he repeated. "That in Chinook means the deer, does it not – or the elk; which is it? I haven't been here long enough to pick up much of the jargon."

"Well, then, ye'll be hearin' enough of it from Genesee," broke in MacDougall. "He'll be forgettin' his native language in it if he lives here five years longer; an' – "

"There, you've said enough," suggested Genesee. "After giving a fellow a recommend for solid work, don't spoil it by an account of his fancy accomplishments. You're likely to overdo it. Yes, Mowitza means a deer, and this one has earned her name. We'll both be down at your camp by sun-up to-morrow; will that do?"

"It certainly will," answered Hardy in a tone of satisfaction. "And the folks below will be mighty glad to know a white man is to go with us. Jim Kale rather made them doubtful of squaw men, and my sister is timid about Indians as steady company through the hills. I must get back and give them the good news. At sun-up to-morrow, Mr. Genesee?"

"At sun-up to-morrow."

CHAPTER II.
AS THE SUN ROSE

Do you know the region of the Kootenai that lies in the northwest corner of a most northwestern state – where the "bunch-grass" of the grazing levels bends even now under a chance wild stallion and his harem of silken-coated mates; where fair upland "parks" spread back from the cool rush of the rivers; where the glittering peaks of the mountains glow at the rise and fall of night like the lances of a guard invincible, that lift their grand silence as a barrier against the puny strife of the outside world?

Do you know what it is to absorb the elastic breath of the mountains at the awakening of day? To stand far above the levels and watch the faint amethystine peaks catch one by one their cap of gold flung to them from an invisible sun? To feel the blood thrill with the fever of an infinite possession as the eyes look out alone over a seemingly creatureless scene of vastness, of indefiniteness of all vague promise, in the growing light of day? To feel the cool crispness of the heights, tempered by the soft "Chinook" winds? To feel the fresh wet dews of the morning on your hands and on your face, and to know them in a dim way odorous – odorous with the virginity of the hills – of the day dawn, with all the sweet things of form or feeling that the new day brings into new life?

A girl on Scot's Mountain seemed to breathe in all that intoxication of the hill country, as she stood on a little level, far above the smoke of the camp-fire, and watched the glowing, growing lights on the far peaks. A long time she had stood there, her riding-dress gathered up above the damp grass, her cap in her hand, and her brown hair tossing in a bath of the winds. Twice a shrill whistle had called her to the camp hidden by the spruce boughs, but she had only glanced down toward the valley, shook her head mutinously, and returned to the study of her panorama; for it seemed so entirely her own – displaying its beauties for her sole surprisal – that it seemed discourteous to ignore it or descend to lower levels during that changing carnival of color. So she just nodded a negative to her unseen whistler below, determined not to leave, even at the risk of getting the leavings of the breakfast – not a small item to a young woman with a healthy, twenty-year-old appetite.

Something at last distracted that wrapt attention. What was it? She heard no sound, had noticed no movement but the stir of the wind in the leaves and the grasses, yet she shrugged her shoulders with a twitchy movement of being disturbed and not knowing by what. Then she gathered her skirts a little closer in her hand and took a step or so backward in an uncertain way, and a moment later clapped the cap on her tumbled hair, and turned around, looking squarely into the face of a stranger not a dozen steps from her, who was watching her with rather sombre, curious eyes. Their steady gaze accounted for the mesmeric disturbance, but her quick turn gave her revenge, for he flushed to the roots of his dark hair as she caught him watching her like that, and he did not speak just at first. He lifted his wide-brimmed hat, evidently with the intention of greeting her, but his tongue was a little unruly, and he only looked at her, and she at him.

They stood so in reality only a flash of seconds, though it seemed a continuous stare of minutes to both; then the humorous side of the situation appealed to the girl, and her lips twitched ever so slightly as she recovered her speech first and said demurely:

"Good morning, sir."

"How are you?" he returned; and having regained the use of his tongue, he added, in an easier way: "You'll excuse me, lady, if I sort of scared you?"

"Oh, no, I was not at all startled," she answered hastily, "only a little surprised."

"Yes," he agreed, "so was I. That's why I stood there a-staring at you – couldn't just make out if you were real or a ghost, though I never before saw even the ghost of a white woman in this region."

"And you were watching to see if I would vanish into thin air like a Macbeth witch, were you?" she asked quizzically.

He might be on his native heath and she an interloper, but she was much the most at her ease – evidently a young lady of adaptability and considerable self-possession. His eyes had grown wavering and uncertain in their glances, and that flush made him still look awkward, and she wondered if Macbeth's witches were not unheard-of individuals to him, and she noticed with those direct, comprehensive eyes that a suit of buckskin can be wonderfully becoming to tall, lazy-looking men, and that wide, light sombreros have quite an artistic effect as a frame for dark hair and eyes; and through that decision she heard him say:

"No. I wasn't watching you for anything special, only if you were a real woman, I reckoned you were prospecting around looking for the trail, and – and so I just waited to see, knowing you were a stranger."

"And is that all you know about me?" she asked mischievously. "I know much more than that about you."

"How much?"

"Oh, I know you're just coming from Davy MacDougall's, and you are going to Hardy's camp to act as commander-in-chief of the eastern tramps in it, and your name is Mr. Jack Genesee – and – and – that is all."

"Yes, I reckon it is," he agreed, looking at her in astonishment. "It's a good deal, considering you never saw me before, and I don't know – "

"And you don't know who I am," she rejoined easily. "Well, I can tell you that, too. I'm a wanderer from Kentucky, prospecting, as you would call it, for something new in this Kootenai country of yours, and my name is Rachel Hardy."

"That's a good, square statement," he smiled, put at his ease by the girl's frankness. "So you're one of the party I'm to look after on this cultus corrie?"

"Yes, I'm one of them – Cousin Hardy says the most troublesome of the lot, because I always want to be doing just the things I've no business to"; then she looked at him and laughed a little. "I tell you this at once," she added, "so you will know what a task you have undertaken, and if you're timid, you might back out before it's too late – are you timid?"

"Do I look it?"

"N – no"; but she didn't give him the scrutiny she had at first – only a swift glance and a little hurry to her next question: "What was that queer term you used when speaking of our trip – cul – cultus?"

"Oh, cultus corrie! That's Chinook for pleasure ride."

"Is it? What queer words they have. Cousin Harry was telling me it was a mongrel language, made up of Indian, French, English, and any stray words from other tongues that were adjustable to it. Is it hard to learn?"

"I think not – I learned it."

"What becoming modesty in that statement!" she laughed quizzically. "Come, Mr. Jack Genesee, suppose we begin our cultus corrie by eating breakfast together; they've been calling me for the past half-hour."

He whistled for Mowitza, and Miss Rachel Hardy recognized at once the excellence of this silken-coated favorite.

"Mowitza; what a musical name!" she remarked as she followed the new guide to the trail leading down the mountain. "It sounds Russian – is it?"

"No; another Chinook word – look out there; these stones are bad ones to balance on, they're too round, and that gully is too deep below to make it safe."

"I'm all right," she announced in answer to the warning as she amused herself by hopping bird-like from one round, insecure bowlder to another, and sending several bounding and crashing into the gully that cut deep into the heart of the mountain. "I can manage to keep my feet on your hills, even if I can't speak their language. By the way, I suppose you don't care to add Professor of Languages to your other titles, do you, Mr. Jack Genesee?"

"I reckon I'm in the dark now, Miss, sort of blind-fold – can't catch onto what you mean."

"Oh, I was just thinking I might take up the study of Chinook while out here, and go back home overwhelming the natives by my novel accomplishment." And she laughed so merrily at the idea, and looked so quizzically at Genesee Jack's dark, serious face, that he smiled in sympathy.

They had only covered half the trail leading down to the camp, but already, through the slightly strange and altogether unconventional meeting, she found herself making remarks to him with the freedom of a long-known chum, and rather enjoying the curious, puzzled look with which he regarded her when she was quick enough to catch him looking at her at all.

"Stop a moment," she said, just as the trail plunged from the open face of the mountain into the shadow of spruce and cedar. "You see this every morning, I suppose, but it is a grand treat to me. See how the light has crept clear down to the level land now. I came up here long before there was a sign of the sun, for I knew the picture would be worth it. Isn't it beautiful?"

Her eyes, alight with youth and enthusiasm, were turned for a last look at the sun-kissed country below, to which she directed his attention with one bare, outstretched hand.

"Yes, it is," he agreed; but his eyes were not on the valley of the Kootenai, but on the girl's face.

CHAPTER III.
WHAT IS A SQUAW MAN?

"Rache, I want you to stop it." The voice had an insinuating tone, as if it would express "will you stop it?"

The speaker was a chubby, matronly figure, enthroned on a hassock of spruce boughs, while the girl stretched beside her was drawing the fragrant spikes of green, bit by bit, over closed eyes and smiling; only the mouth and chin could be seen under the green veil, but the corners of the mouth were widening ever so little. Smiles should engender content; they are supposed to be a voucher of sweet thoughts, but at times they have a tendency to bring out all that is irritable in human nature, and the chubby little woman noted that growing smile with rising impatience.

"I am not jesting," she continued, as if there might be a doubt on that question; "and I wish you would stop it."

"You haven't given it a name yet. Say, Clara, that sounds like an invitation to drink, doesn't it? – a western invitation."

But her fault-finder was not going to let her escape the subject like that.

"I am not sure it has a name," she said curtly. "No one seems to know whether it is Genesee Jack or Jack Genesee, or whether both are not aliases – in fact, the most equivocal sort of companion for a young girl over these hills."

"What a tempest you raise about nothing, Clara," said the girl good-humoredly; "one would think that I was in hourly danger of being kidnaped by Mr. Genesee Jack – the name is picturesque in sound, and suits him, don't you think so? But I am sure the poor man is quite harmless, and stands much more in awe of me than I do of him."

"I believe you," assented her cousin tartly. "I never knew you to stand in awe of anything masculine, from your babyhood. You are a born flirt, for all your straightforward, independent ways. Oh, I know you."

"So I hear you say," answered Miss Hardy, peering through the screen of cedar sprays, her eyes shining a little wickedly from their shadows. "You have a hard time of it with me, haven't you, dear? By the way, Clara, who prompted you to this lecture – Hen?"

"No, Hen did not; neither he nor Alec seem to have eyes or ears for anything but deer and caribou; they are constantly airing their new-found knowledge of the country. I had to beg Alec to come to sleep last night, or I believe they would have gossiped until morning. The one redeeming point in your Genesee Jack is that he doesn't talk."

"He isn't my Genesee Jack," returned the girl; "but he does talk, and talk well, I think. You do not know him, that is all, and you never will, with those starchy manners of yours. Not talk! – why, he has taught me a lot of Chinook, and told me all about a miner's life and a hunter's. Not talk! – I've only known him a little over a week, and he has told me his life for ten years back."

"Yes, with no little encouragement from you, I'll wager."

"Well, my bump of curiosity was enlarged somewhat as to his life," acknowledged the girl. "You see he has such an unusual personality, unusually interesting, I mean. I never knew any man like him in the East. Why, he only needs a helmet instead of the sombrero, and armor instead of the hunting suit, and he would make an ideal Launcelot."

"Good gracious, Rache! do stop raving over the man, or I shall certainly have Hen discharge him and take you back to civilization at once."

"But perhaps I won't go back – what then; and perhaps Hen could not be able to see your reason for getting rid of a good guide," said the girl coolly, knowing she had the upper hand of the controversy; "and as to the raving, you know I never said a word about him until you began to find fault with everything, from the cut of his clothes to the name he gives, and then – well, a fellow must stand up for his friends, you know."

"Of course a fellow must," agreed someone back of them, and the young ranchman from the East came down under the branches from the camp-fire just kindled; "that is a manly decision, Rache, and does you credit. But what's the argument?"

"Oh, Clara thinks I am taking root too quickly in the soil of loose customs out here," explained the girl, covering the question, yet telling nothing.

"She doesn't approve of our savage mode of life, does she?" he queried, sympathetically; "and she hasn't seen but a suggestion of its horrors yet. Too bad Jim Kale did not come; she could have made the acquaintance of a specimen that would no doubt be of interest to her – a squaw man with all his native charms intact."

"Hen," said the girl, rising on her elbow, "I wish you would tell me just what you mean by a 'squaw man'; is it a man who buys squaws, or sells them, or eats them, or – well, what does he do?"

"He marries them – sometimes," was the laconic reply, as if willing to drop the question. But Miss Rache, when interested, was not to be thrust aside until satisfied.

"Is that all?" she persisted; "is he a sort of Mormon, then – an Indian Mormon? And how many do they marry?"

"I never knew them to marry more than one," hazarded Mr. Hardy. "But, to tell the truth, I know very little about their customs; I understand they are generally a worthless class of men, and the term 'squaw man' is a stigma, in a way – the most of them are rather ashamed of it, I believe."

"I don't see why," began Rache.

"No, I don't suppose you do," broke in her cousin Hardy with a relative's freedom, "and it is not necessary that you should; just confine your curiosity to other phases of Missoula County that are open for inspection, and drop the squaw men."

"I haven't picked up any of them yet," returned the girl, rising to her feet, "but I will the first chance I get; and I give you fair warning, you might as well tell me all I want to know, for I will find out."

"I'll wager she will," sighed Clara, as the girl walked away to where their traps and sachels were stacked under a birch tree, and while she turned things topsy-turvy looking for something, she nodded her head sagaciously over her shoulder at the two left behind; "to be sure she will – she is one of the girls who are always stumbling on just the sort of knowledge that should be kept from them; and this question of your horrid social system out here – well, she will know all about it if she has to interview Ivans or your guide to find out; and I suppose it is an altogether objectionable topic?"

The intonation of the last words showed quite as much curiosity as the girl had declared, only it was more carefully veiled.

"Oh, I don't know as it is," returned her brother; "except under – well – circumstances. But, some way, a white man is mightily ashamed to have it known that he has a squaw wife. Ivans told me that many of them would as soon be shot as to have it known back East where they came from."

"Yes," remarked a gentleman who joined them during this speech, and whose brand-new hunting suit bespoke the "got-up-regardless" tourist; "it is strange, don't you think so? Why, back East we would hear of such a marriage and think it most romantic; but out here – well, it seems hard to convince a Westerner that there is any romance about an Indian."

"And I don't wonder, Alec, do you?" asked Mrs. Houghton, turning to her husband as if sure of sympathy from him; "all the squaws we have seen are horribly slouchy, dirty creatures. I have yet to see the Indian maiden of romance."

"In their original state they may have possessed all the picturesque dignities and chivalrous character ascribed to them," answered Mr. Houghton, doubtfully; "but if so, their contact with the white race has caused a vast degeneration."

"Which it undoubtedly has," returned Hardy, decidedly. "Mixing of races always has that effect, and in the Indian country it takes a most decided turn. The Siwash or Indian men of this territory may be a thieving, whisky-drinking lot, but the chances are that nine-tenths of the white men who marry among them become more worthless and degraded than the Indian."

"There are, I suppose, exceptions," remarked Houghton.

"Well, there may be," answered Hardy, "but they are not taken into consideration, and that is why a man dislikes to be classed among them. There is something of the same feeling about it that there is back home about a white man marrying a negro."

"Then why do they do it, if they are ashamed of it?" queried Mrs. Houghton with logical directness.

"Well, I suppose because there are no white women here for them to marry," answered her brother, "and Indians or half-breeds are always to be found."

"If ministers are not," added Houghton.

"Exactly!"

"Oh, good gracious!" ejaculated the little matron in a tone of disgust; "no wonder they are ashamed – even the would-be honest ones are likely to incur suspicion, because, as you say, the exceptions are too few for consideration. A truly delightful spot you have chosen; the moral atmosphere would be a good field for a missionary, I should say – yet you would come here."

"Yes, and I am going to stay, too," said Hardy, in answer to this sisterly tirade. "We see or know but little of those poor devils or their useless lives – only we know by hearing that such a state of things exists. But as for quitting the country because of that – well, no, I could not be bought back to the East after knowing this glorious climate. Why, Tillie and I have picked out a tree to be buried under – a magnificent fellow that grows on the plateau above our house – just high enough to view the Four-mile Park from. She is as much in love with the freedom of these hills as I am."

"Poor child!" said his sister, commiseratingly; "to think of her being exiled in that park, twenty miles from a white woman! – didn't you say it was twenty?"

"Yes," and her brother leaned his back against the tree and smiled down at her; "it's twenty and a half, and the white woman whom you see at the end of the trip keeps a tavern – runs it herself, and sells the whisky that crosses the bar with an insinuating manner that is all her own. I've heard that she can sling an ugly fist in a scrimmage. She is a great favorite with the boys; the pet name they have for her is Holland Jin."

"Ugh! Horrible! And she – she allows them to call her so?"

"Certainly; you see it is a trade-mark for the house; her real name is Jane Holland."

"Holland Jin!" repeated his sister with a shudder. "Tillie, come here! Have you heard this? Hen has been telling me of your neighbor, Holland Jin. How do you expect to live always in this out-of-the-way place?"

Out from under the branches where their camp had just been located came Tillie, a charmingly plain little wife of less than a year – just her childishly curved red lips and her soft dark eyes to give attractiveness to her tanned face.

"Yes, I have heard of her," she said in a slow, half-shy way; "she can't be very – very – nice; but one of the stockmen said she was good-hearted if anyone was sick or needed help, so she can't be quite bad."

"You dear little soul," said her sister-in-law fondly; "you would have a good word to say for anyone; but you must allow it will be awfully dismal out here without any lady friends."

"You are here, and Rache."

"Yes, but when Rache and I have gone back to civilization?"

The dark eyes glanced at the speaker and then at the tall young ranchman. "Hen will be here always."

"Oh, you insinuating little Quaker!" laughed the older woman; "one would think you were married yesterday and the honeymoon only begun, would you not, Alec? I wonder if these Chinook winds have a tendency to softening of the brain – have they, Hen? If so, you and Tillie are in a dangerous country. What was it you shot this time, Alec – a pole-cat or a flying-squirrel? Yes, I'll go and see for myself."

And she followed her husband across the open space of the plateau to where Ivans was cutting slices of venison from the latest addition to their larder; while Hardy stood smiling down, half amusedly, at the flushed face of the little wife.

"Are you afraid of softening of the brain?" he asked in a tone of concern. She shook her head, but did not look up. She was easily teased, as much so about her husband as if he was still a wooer. And to have shown her fondness in his sister's eyes! What sister could ever yet see the reason for a sister-in-law's blind adoration?

"Are you going to look on yourself as a martyr after the rest have left you here in solitary confinement with me as a jailer?"

Another shake of the head, and the drooped eyes were raised for one swift glance.

"Because I was thinking," continued her tormentor – "I was thinking that if the exile, as Clara calls it, would be too severe on you, I might, if it was for your own good – I might send you back with the rest to Kentucky."

Then there was a raising of the head quick enough and a tempestuous flight across the space that separated them, and a flood of remonstrances that ended in happy laughter, a close clasp of arms, and – yes, in spite of the girl who was standing not very far away – a kiss; and Hardy circled his wife's shoulders with his long arms, and, with a glance of laughing defiance at his cousin, drew her closer and followed in the wake of the Houghtons.

The girl had deliberately stood watching that little scene with a curious smile in her eyes, a semi-cynical gaze at the lingering fondness of voice and touch. There was no envy in her face, only a sort of good-natured disbelief. Her cousin Clara always averred that Rachel was too masculine in spirit to ever understand the little tendernesses that burnish other women's lives.