Kitabı oku: «Told in the Hills: A Novel», sayfa 9

CHAPTER III.
AT CROSS-PURPOSES

 
"Their tricks and craft ha' put me daft,
They've taen me in, and a' that."
 

"And so you got back unharmed from the midst of the hostiles?" asked Rachel in mock surprise, when, a week later, Hardy, Stuart, and MacDougall returned from their pilgrimage, bringing with them specimens of deer they had sighted on their return.

"Hostiles is about the last name to apply to them, I should imagine," remarked Stuart; "they are as peaceable as sheep."

"But they can fight, too," said MacDougall, "an' used to be reckoned hard customers to meet; but the Blackfeet ha' well-nigh been the finish o' them. The last o' their war-chiefs is an old, old man now, an' there's small chance that any other will ever walk in his moccasins."

"I've been told something of the man's character," said Rachel, "but have forgotten his name – Bald Eagle?"

"Grey Eagle. An' there's more character in him worth the tellin' of than you'll find in any Siwash in these parts. I doubt na Genesee told you tales o' him. He took a rare, strange liking to Genesee from the first – made him some presents, an' went through a bit o' ceremony by which they adopt a warrior."

"Was this Genesee of another tribe?" asked Stuart, who was always attentive to any information of the natives.

"Yes," said Rachel quickly, anticipating the others, "of a totally different tribe – one of the most extensive in America at present."

"A youth? A half-breed?"

"No," she replied; "an older man than you, and of pure blood. Hen, there is Miss Margaret pummeling the window for you to notice her. Davy MacDougall, did you bring me nothing at all as a relic of your trip? Well, I must say times are changing when you forget me for an entire week."

Both the men looked a little amused at Rachel's truthful yet misleading replies, and thinking it just one of her freaks, did not interfere, though it was curious to them both that Stuart, living among them so many days, had not heard Genesee mentioned before. But no late news coming from the southern posts, had made the conversations of their troops flag somewhat; while Stuart, coming into their circle, brought new interests, new topics, that had for the while superseded the old, and Genesee's absence of a year had made them count him no longer as a neighbor. Then it may be that, ere this, Rachel had warded off attention from the subject. She scarcely could explain to herself why she did it – it was an instinctive impulse in the beginning; and sometimes she laughed at herself for the folly of it.

"Never mind," she would reassure herself by saying, "even if I am wrong, I harm no one with the fancy; and I have just enough curiosity to make me wonder what that man's real business is in these wilds, for he is not nearly so careless as his manner, and not nearly so light-hearted as his laugh."

"Well, did you find any white men among the Kootenais?" she asked him abruptly, the day of his return.

His head, bent that Miss Margaret could amuse herself with it, as a toy of immense interest, raised suddenly. Much in the girl's tone and manner to him was at times suggestive; this was one of the times. His usually pale face was flushed from his position, and his rumpled hair gave him a totally different appearance as he turned on her a look half-compelling in its direct regard.

"What made you ask that?" he demanded, in a tone that matched the eyes.

She laughed; to see him throw off his guard of gracious suavity was victory enough for one day.

"My feminine curiosity prompted the question," she replied easily. "Did you?"

"No," he returned, after a rather steady look at her; "none that you could call men."

"A specimen, then?"

"Heaven help the race, if the one I saw was accepted as a specimen," he answered fervently; "a filthy, unkempt individual, living on the outskirts of the village, and much more degraded than any Indian I met; but he had a squaw wife."

"Yes, the most of them have – wives or slaves."

"Slaves?" he asked incredulously.

"Actually slaves, though they do not bring the high prices we used to ask for those of darker skin in the South. Emancipation has not made much progress up here. It is too much an unknown corner as yet."

"Is it those of inferior tribes that are bartered, or prisoners taken in battle?"

"No, I believe not, necessarily," she replied, "though I suppose such a windfall would be welcomed; but if there happens to be any superfluous members in a family, it is a profitable way to dispose of them, among some of the Columbia Basin Indians, anyway. Davy MacDougall can give you more information than I, as most of my knowledge is second-hand. But I believe this tribe of the Kootenais is a grade above that sort of traffic – I mean bartering their own kindred."

"How long have you been out here, Miss Rachel?" he asked, as abruptly as she had questioned him of the white men.

"About a year – a little over."

"And you like it?"

"Yes; I like it."

In response to several demands, he had enthroned Miss Margaret on his lap by this time; and even there she was not contented. His head seemed to have a special fascination for her babyship; and she had such an insinuating way of snuggling upward that she was soon close in his arms, her hands in easy reach of his hair, which she did not pull in infantile fashion, but dallied with, and patted caressingly. There was no mistaking the fact that Stuart was prime favorite here at all events; and the affection was not one-sided by any means – unless the man was a thorough actor. His touch, his voice even, acquired a caressing way when Miss Margaret was to be pleased or appeased. Rachel, speaking to Tillie of it, wondered if his attraction was to children in general or to this one in particular; and holding the baby so that her soft, pink cheek was against his own, he seemed ruminating over the girl's replies, and after a little —

"Yes, you must, of course," he said thoughtfully; "else you could never make yourself seem so much a part of it as you do."

During the interval of silence the girl's thoughts had been wandering. She had lost the slight thread of their former topic, and looked a little at sea.

"A part of what?" she asked.

"Why, the life here. You seem as if you had always belonged to it – a bit of local color in harmony with the scenes about us."

"How flattering! – charmingly expressed!" murmered Miss Hardy derisively. "A bit of local color? Then, according to Mr. Stuart's impressions I may look forward to finding myself catalogued among greasy squaws and picturesque squaw men."

"You seem to take a great deal of delight in turning all I say or do into ridicule," he observed. "You do it on the principle of the country that guys a 'tenderfoot'; and that is just one of the things that stamp you as belonging to the life here. I try to think of you as a Kentucky girl transplanted, but even the fancy eludes me. You impress one as belonging to this soil, and more than that, showing a disposition to freeze out new-comers."

"I haven't frozen you out."

"No – thanks to my temperament that refuses to congeal. I did not leave all my warmth in the South."

"Meaning that I did?"

"Meaning that you, for some reason, appear to have done so."

"Dear me, what a subtle personage you make of me! Come here, Margaret; this analyst is likely to prejudice you against your only auntie."

"Let her be with me," he said softly, as the baby's big blue eyes turned toward Rachel, and then were screened by heavy, white lids; "she is almost asleep – little darling. Is she not a picture? See how she clings to my finger – so tightly;" and then he dropped his face until his lips touched the soft cheek. "It is a child to thank God for," he said lovingly.

The girl looked at him, surprised at the thrill of feeling in his tones.

"You spoke like a woman just then," she said, her own voice changed slightly; "like a – a mother – a parent."

"Did I?" he asked, and arose with the child in his arms to deliver it to Aunty Luce. "Perhaps I felt so; is that weakness an added cause for trying to bar me out from the Kootenai hills?"

But he walked away without giving her a chance to reply.

She saw nothing more of him until evening, and then he was rather quiet, sitting beside Tillie and Miss Margaret, with occasional low-toned remarks to them, but not joining in the general conversation.

"What a queer remark that was for a man to make!" thought Rachel, looking at him across the room; – "a young man especially"; and that started her to thinking of his age, about which people would have widely different opinions. To see him sometimes, laughing and joking with the rest, he looked a boy of twenty. To hear him talking of scientific researches in his own profession and others, of the politics of the day, or literature of the age, one would imagine him at least forty. But sitting quietly, his face in repose, yet looking tired, his eyes so full of life, yet steeped in reveries, the rare mouth relaxed, unsmiling, then he looked what he probably was, thought the girl – about thirty; but it was seldom that he looked like that.

"Therefore," reasoned this feminine watcher, "it is seldom that we see him as he really is; query – why?"

"Perhaps I felt as a parent feels!" How frank his words had been, and how unlike most men he was, to give utterance to that thought with so much feeling, and how caressing to the child! Rachel had to acknowledge that he was original in many ways, and the ways were generally charming. His affections were so warm, so frankly bestowed; yet that gracious, tender manner of his, even when compared with the bluntness of the men around him, never made him seem effeminate.

Rachel, thinking of his words, wondered if he had a sweetheart somewhere, that made him think of a possible wife or children longingly – and if so, how that girl must love him!

So, despite her semi-warlike attitude, and her delight in thwarting him, she had appreciation enough of his personality to understand how possible it was for him to be loved deeply.

Jim, under Miss Hardy's tuition, had been making an attempt to "rope in" an education, and that night was reading doubtfully the history of our Glorious Republic in its early days; garnishing the statements now and then with opinions of his own, especially the part relating to the character of the original lords of the soil.

"Say, Miss Rache, yer given' me a straight tip on this lay-out?" he said at last, shutting the book and eyeing her closely.

The question aroused her from the contemplation of the Hermes-like head opposite, though she had, like Hardy, been pretending to read.

"Do you mean, is it true?" she asked.

"Naw!" answered Jim, with the intonation of supreme disgust; "I hain't no call to ask that; but what I'm curious about is whether the galoot as wrote the truck lied by accident – someone sort o' playin' it on him, ye see – er whether he thought the rest o' creation was chumps from away back, an' he just naturally laid himself out to sell them cheap – now say, which is it?"

In vain his monitor tried to impress on his mind the truth of the chronicles, and the fact that generations ago the Indian could be truly called a noble man, until his child-like faith in the straight tongue of the interloper had made a net for his feet, to escape which they had recourse only to treachery and the tomahawk, thus carving in history a character that in the beginning was not his, but one into which he was educated by the godly people who came with their churches and guns, their religion and whisky, to civilize the credulous people of the forests.

Jim listened, but in the supercilious disbelief in his eyes Rachel read the truth. In trying to establish historical facts for his benefit, she was simply losing ground in his estimation at every statement made.

"An' you," he finally remarked, after listening in wonderful silence for him – "an' you've read it all, then?"

"Yes, most of it."

"An' swallowed it as gospel?"

"Well, not exactly such literal belief as that; but I have read not only this history, but others in support of those facts."

"Ye have, have yeh?" remarked her pupil, with a sarcastic contempt for her book-learning. "Well, I allow this one will do me a life-time, fer I've seen Flatheads, an' Diggers, an' Snakes!"

Thus ended the first lesson in history.

"Don't you think," said Tillie softly to Stuart, "that Rachel would win more glory as a missionary to the Indians than among her own race? She is always running against stumbling-blocks of past knowledge with the progressive white man."

Rachel cast one silencing glance at the speaker; Tillie laughed.

"Never mind," she said reassuringly; "I will say nothing about your other attempt, and I only hope you will be willing to confine yourself to the Indians near home, and not start out to see some Flatheads, and Diggers, and Snakes for yourself."

"Lawd bress yeh, honey!" spoke up Aunty Luce, whose ears were always open to anything concerning their red neighbors; "don' yo' go to puttin' no sech thoughts in her haid. Miss Rache needs tamin' down, she do, 'stead o' 'couragement."

"Well, it's precious little encouragement I get here, except to grow rusty in everything," complained Rachel. "A crusade against even the Diggers would be a break in the monotony. I wish I had gone with you to the Kootenai village, Mr. Stuart; that would have been a diversion."

"But rather rough riding," he added; "and much of the life, and – well, there is a great deal one would not care to take a lady to see."

"You don't know how Rachel rides," said Tillie, with a note of praise in her voice; "she rides as hard as the men on the ranch. You must go together for a ride, some day. She knows the country very well already."

Rachel was thinking of the other part of his speech.

"I should not have asked to be taken," she said, "but would have gone on my own independence, as one of the party."

"Then your independence would have led you to several sights revolting to a refined nature," he said seriously, "and you would have wished yourself well out of it."

"Well, the Kootenais are several degrees superior to other tribes of the Columbia Basin; so you had better fight shy of Jim's knowledge. Why," she added, with a little burst of indignation that their good points were so neglected, "the Kootenais are a self-supporting people, asking nothing of the Government. They are independent traders."

"Say, Miss Rachel," broke in Jim, "was Kalitan a Kootenai Injun?"

"No, though he lived with them often. He was of the Gros Ventres, a race that belongs to the plains rather than the hills."

"You are already pretty well posted about the different tribes," observed Stuart.

"Yes, the Lawd knows – humph!" grunted Aunty Luce, evidently thinking the knowledge not a thing to be proud of.

"Oh, yes," smiled Tillie, "Rachel takes easily to everything in these hills. You should hear her talking Chinook to a blanket brave, or exchanging compliments with her special friend, the Arrow."

"The Arrow? That is a much more suggestive title than the Wahoosh, Kah-kwa, Sipah, and some other equally meaningless names I jotted down as I heard them up there."

"They are only meaningless to strangers," answered the girl. "They all have their own significance."

"Why, this same Arrow is called Kalitan," broke in Jim; "an' what'd you make out of that? Both names mean just the same thing. He was called that even when he was a little fellow, he said, 'cause he could run like a streak. Why, he used to make the trip down to the settlement an' be back here with the mail afore supper, makin' his forty miles afoot after breakfast; how's that for movin' over rough country?"

The swiftness did not seem to make the desired impression, his listener catching, instead, at the fact of their having had an Indian mail-carrier.

"And where is your Indian messenger of late?" he asked. "He has not visited you since my arrival, has he?"

"No; he left this country months ago," said Rachel. "Kalitan is a bit of a wanderer – never long in one place."

"Davy MacDougall says he'd allus loaf around here if Genesee would, but he's sure to go trottin' after Genesee soon as he takes a trail."

"That is the Indian you spoke of this morning, is it not?" asked Stuart, looking at Rachel.

"What!" roared Jim; and Hardy, who was taking a nap behind a paper, awoke with a start. "Genesee an Injun! Well, that's good!" and he broke into shrill, boyish laughter. "Well, you ought to just say it to his face, that's all!"

"Is he not?" he asked, still looking at the girl, who did not answer.

"Oh, no," said Tillie; "he is a white man, a – a – well, he has lived with the Indians, I believe."

"I understood you to say he himself was an Indian." And Rachel felt the steady regard of those warm eyes, while she tried to look unconscious, and knew she was failing.

Hardy laughed, and shook himself rightly awake.

"Beg your pardon," he said, coming to the rescue, "but she didn't say so; she only gave you the information that he was pure-blooded; and I should say he is – as much of a white man as you or I."

"Mine was the mistake," acknowledged Stuart, with his old easy manner once more; "but Miss Rachel's love of a joke did not let me fall into it without a leader. And may I ask who he is, this white man with the Indian name – what is he?"

Rachel answered him then brusquely: "You saw a white man with the Kootenais, did you not – one who lives as they do, with a squaw wife, or slave? You described the specimen as more degraded than the Indians about him. Well, Genesee is one of the class to which that man belongs – a squaw man; and he is also an Indian by adoption. Do you think you would care for a closer acquaintance?"

Tillie opened her eyes wide at this sweeping denunciation of Genesee and his life, while even Hardy looked surprised; Rachel had always, before, something to say in his favor. But the man she questioned so curtly was the only one who did not change even expression. He evidently forgot to answer, but sat there looking at her, with a little smile in his eyes.

Once in bed, it did not keep her awake; and the gray morning crept in ere she opened her eyes, earlier than usual, and from a cause not usual – the sound in the yard of a man's voice singing snatches of song, ignoring the words sometimes, but continuing the air in low carols of music, such as speak so plainly of a glad heart. It was not yet sun-up, and she rebelled, drowsily, at the racket as she rolled over toward the window and looked out. There he was, tinkering at something about his saddle, now and then whistling in mimicry of a bird swaying on a leafless reed in the garden. She could see the other men, out across the open space by the barn, moving around as usual, looking after the domestic stock; but until one has had a breakfast, no well-regulated individual is hilarious or demonstrative, and their movements, as she could see, were not marvels of fast locomotion. They looked as she felt, she thought, yawningly, and groped around for her shoes, and finding them, sat down on the side of the bed again and looked out at that musical worker in the yard.

She could hear Aunty Luce tinkling the dishes in the kitchen, and Tillie and Miss Margaret, in the next room, cooing over some love-story of dawn they were telling each other. All seemed drowsy and far off, except that penetrating, cheery voice outside.

"The de'il tak' him!" she growled, quoting MacDougall; "what does the fellow mean by shouting like that this time of the night? He is as much of a boy as Jim."

 
"Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie.
Here awa', there awa', haud awa', hame!"
 

warbled the Stuart, with an accent that suited his name; and the girl wakened up a bit to the remembrance of the old song, thinking, as she dressed, that, social and cheery as he often was, this was the first time she had ever heard him sing; and what a resonant, yet boyish, timbre thrilled through his voice. She threw up the window.

"Look here!" she said, with mock asperity, "we are willing to make some allowance for national enthusiasm, Mr. Charles, Prince of the Stuarts, but we rebel at Scotch love-songs shouted under our windows before daybreak."

"All right," he smiled, amiably. "I know one or two Irish ones, if you prefer them.

 
"Oh, acushla Mavourneen! won't you marry me?
Gramachree, Mavourneen; oh, won't you marry me?"
 

Click! went the window shut again, and from the inside she saw him looking up at the casement with eyes full of triumph and mischief. He was metamorphosed in some way. Yesterday he had been serious and earnest, returning from his hill trip with something like despondency, and now —

She remembered her last sight of him the night before, as he smiled at her from the stairway. Ah, yes, yes! all just because he had felt jubilant over outwitting her, or rather over seeing a chance do the work for another. Was it for that he was still singing? Had her instincts then told her truly when she had connected his presence with the memory of that older man's sombre eyes and dogged exile? Well, the exile was his own business, not that of anyone else – least of all that of this debonair individual, with his varying emotions.

And she went down the stairs with a resentful feeling against the light-hearted melody of "Acushla Mavourneen."

"Be my champion, Mrs. Hardy," he begged at the breakfast-table, "or I am tabooed forever by Miss Rachel."

"How so?"

"By what I intended as an act of homage, giving her a serenade at sunrise in the love-songs of my forefathers."

"Nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "He never knew what his forefathers were until Davy MacDougall brushed up his history; and you have not thought much of the songs you were trying to sing, else you would know they belong to the people of the present and future as well as the past.

"Trying to sing!" was all the comment Mr. Stuart made, turning with an injured air to Tillie.

"Learn some Indian songs," advised that little conspirator impressively; "in the Kootenai country you must sing Chinook if you want to be appreciated."

"There speaks one who knows," chimed in Hardy lugubriously. "A year ago I had a wife and an undivided affection; but I couldn't sing Chinook, and the other fellow could, and for many consecutive days I had to take a back seat."

"Hen! How dare you?"

"In fact," he continued, unrestrained by the little woman's tones or scolding eyes, "I believe I have to thank jealousy for ever reinstating me to the head of the family."

"Indeed," remarked Stuart, with attention impressively flattering; "may I ask how it was effected?"

"Oh, very simply – very simply. Chance brought her the knowledge that there was another girl up the country to whom her hero sang Chinook songs, and, presto! she has ever since found English sufficient for all her needs."

And Tillie, finding she had enough to do to defend herself without teasing Rachel, gave her attention to her husband, and the girl turned to Stuart.

"All this gives no reason for your spasms of Scotch expression this morning," she reminded him.

"No? Well, my father confessor in the feminine, I was musical – beg pardon, tried to be – because I awoke this morning with an unusually light heart; and I sang Scotch songs – or tried to sing them – because I was thinking of a Scotchman, and contemplating a visit to him to-day."

"Davy MacDougall?"

"The same."

"And you were with him only yesterday."

"And may say good-bye to him to-morrow for a long time."

"So you are going?" she asked, in a more subdued tone.

"I believe so!" And for the moment the question and answer made the two seem entirely alone, though surrounded by the others. Then she laughed in the old quizzical, careless way.

"I see now the inspiration to song and jubilance that prevented you from sleeping," she said, nodding her head sagaciously. "It was the thought of escaping from us and our isolated life. Is that it?"

"No, it is not," he answered earnestly. "My stay here has been a pleasure, and out of it I hope will grow something deeper – a happiness."

The feeling in the words made her look at him quickly. His eyes met her own, with some meaning back of their warmth that she did not understand. Nine girls out of ten would have thought the words and manner suggestive of a love declaration and would at once have dropped their eyes in the prettiest air of confusion and been becomingly fluttered; but Rachel was the tenth, and her eyes were remarkably steady as she returned his glance with one of inquiry, reached for another biscuit, and said:

"Yes?"

But the low tones and his earnestness had not escaped two pairs of eyes at the table – those of Mistress Tillie and Master Jim – both of them coming to about the same conclusion in the matter, the one that Rachel was flirting, and the other that Stuart "had a bad case of spoons."

Many were the expostulations when, after breakfast, Hardy's guest informed him that his exit from their circle was likely to be almost as abrupt as his entrance had been. In vain was there held out to him the sport of their proposed hunt – every persuasive argument was met with a regretful refusal.

"I am sorry to put aside that pleasure," he answered; "but, to tell the truth, I scarcely realized how far the season has advanced. The snow will soon be deep in the mountains, they tell me, and before that time I must get across the country to Fort Owens. It is away from a railroad far enough to make awkward travel in bad weather, and I realize that the time is almost past when I can hope for dry days and sunshine; so, thinking it over last night, I felt I had better start as early as possible."

"You know nothing of the country in that direction?" asked Hardy.

"No more than I did of this; but an old school-fellow of mine is one of the officers there – Captain Sneath. I have not seen him for years, but can not consider my trip up here complete without visiting him; so, you see – "

"Better fight shy o' that territory," advised Andrews, chipping in with a cowboy's brief say-so. "Injun faction fights all through thar, an' it's risky, unless ye go with a squad – a big chance to pack bullets."

"Then I shall have an opportunity of seeing life there under the most stirring circumstances," replied Stuart in smiling unconcern, "for in time of peace a military post is about the dullest place one can find."

"To be sure," agreed his adviser, eyeing him dubiously; "an' if ye find yerself sort o' pinin' for the pomp o' war, as I heard an actor spoutin' about once, in a theatre at Helena – well, down around Bitter Root River, an' up the Nez Perce Fork, I reckon you'll find a plenty o' it jest about this time o' year."

"And concluding as I have to leave at once," resumed Stuart, turning to Hardy, "I felt like taking a ride up to MacDougall's for a good-bye. I find myself interested in the old man, and would not like to leave without seeing him again."

"I rather think I've got to stay home to-day," said his host ruefully, "else I would go with you, but – "

"Not a word of your going," broke in Stuart; "do you think I've located here for the purpose of breaking up your routine of stock and agricultural schemes? Not a bit of it! I'm afraid, as it is, your hospitality has caused them to suffer; so not a word of an escort. I wouldn't take a man from the place, so – "

"What about a woman?" asked Rachel, with a challenging glance that was full of mischief. For a moment he looked at a loss for a reply, and she continued: "Because I don't mind taking a ride to Davy MacDougall's my own self. As you say, the sunny days will be few now, and I may not have another chance for weeks; so here I am, ready to guide you, escort you, and guard you with my life."

What was there left for the man to say?

"What possessed you to go to-day, Rachel?" asked Tillie dubiously. "Do you think it is quite – "

"Oh, yes, dear – quite," returned that young lady confidently; "and you need not assume that anxious air regarding either the proprieties or my youthful affections, for, to tell the truth, I am impelled to go through sheer perversity; not because your latest favorite wants me, but simply because he does not."

Twenty minutes after her offer they were mounted and clattering away over the crisp bronze turf. To Stuart the task of entertaining a lady whose remarks to him seldom verged from the ironical was anything but a sinecure – more, it was easy to see that he was unused to it; and an ungallant query to himself was: "Why did she come, anyway?" He had not heard her reply to Tillie.

The air was crisp and cold enough to make their heavy wraps a comfort, especially when they reached the higher land; the sun was showing fitfully, low-flying, skurrying clouds often throwing it in eclipse.

"Snow is coming," prophesied the girl, with a weather-eye to the north, where the sky was banking up in pale-gray masses; "perhaps not heavy enough to impede your trip south, to Owens, but that bit over there looks like a visiting-card of winter."

"How weather-wise you are!" he observed. "Now I had noticed not the slightest significance in all that; in fact, you seem possessed of several Indian accomplishments – their wood-lore, their language, their habit of going to nature instead of an almanac; and did not Mrs. Hardy say you knew some Indian songs? Who taught you them?"

"Songs came near getting us into a civil war at breakfast," she observed, "and I am not sure that the ground is any more safe around Indian than Scotch ones."

"There is something more substantial of the former race" he said, pointing ahead.

It was the hulking figure of a Siwash, who had seen them first and tried to dodge out of sight, and failing, halted at the edge of a little stream.

"Hostile?" queried Stuart, relying more on his companion's knowledge than his own; but she shook her head.

"No; from the Reservation, I suppose. He doesn't look like a blanket brave. We will see."

Coming within speaking distance, she hailed him across the divide of the little stream, and got in reply what seemed to Stuart an inextricable mass of staccatos and gutturals.