But the men were not so aggressive. The most audacious was the senseless one, who had fired the revolver and whom Overton had promptly and quietly knocked down.
“I don’t think you men want any trouble of this sort,” he remarked, and ignored the women entirely. “If you’ve been told that I’m not in this, that’s just where some one told you a lie; and if it’s a woman, you should know better than to follow her lead. If these women get through that door, it will be when I’m an angel. I’m doing you all a good turn by not letting the boys in there know about this. No religion could save you, if I turned them loose on you; so you had better get away quiet, and quick.”
The men seemed to appreciate his words.
“That’s so,” mumbled one.
And as the other woman attempted a protest, one of the men put his hand over her mouth, and, picking her up bodily, walked down the street with her, she all the time kicking and making remarks of a vigorous nature.
The humor of the situation appealed to the delicate senses of her companions, until they laughed right heartily, and the entire tone of the scene was changed from a threat of battle to an excuse for jollity. The man on the ground reeled upward to his feet with the help of a shake from Overton.
“Where’s my gun?” he asked, sulkily.
Blood trickling from a cut brow compelled him to keep one eye shut.
“Overton has it,” explained one of his friends. “Come on, and don’t try another racket.”
“I want my gun – it was him hit me,” growled the wounded one, whose spirits had not been enlivened by the spectacle the rest had witnessed.
“You are right – it was him,” agreed the other, darkly; “and if it hadn’t been for breaking up the dance, I guess he’d a-killed you. Come on. You left a ball in his arm by the looks of things, and all he did was to knock you still. He may want to do more to-morrow. But as you have no gun, you’d better wait till then.”
The door had been opened, and the light streamed out. Men talked in a friendly, jovial fashion on and about the doorstep. They saw the forms moving away in the shadows, but no sign of disturbance met them.
Overton stood looking in the window at the dancers. The waltz was not yet finished, and ’Tana and Lyster drifted past within a few feet of him. The serenity of their evening had not been disturbed. Her face held all of joyous content – so it seemed to the watcher. She laughed as she danced; and hearing the music of her high, girlish tones, he forgot for a time the stinging little pain in his arm, until his left hand, thrust into his coat pocket, slowly filled with blood. Then Dan turned to the man nearest him.
“If Doctor Harrison is still in there, would you do me the favor of asking him to come outside for a few minutes?” he asked, and the man addressed stepped closer.
“There is a back way into the house. Hadn’t you better just step in that way, and have him fix you up? He’s in the back room, alone, smoking.”
Overton turned with an impatient exclamation, and a sharp, questioning look. It was the half-paralyzed stranger – Harris.
“Oh, I ain’t interfering!” he said, amiably. “But as I slipped out through the back door before your visitors left, I dropped to the fact that you had some damage done to that left arm. Yes, I’ll carry any message you like to your doctor, for I like your nerve. But I must say it’s thankless work to stand up as a silent target for cold lead, just so some one else may dance undisturbed. Take an old man’s advice, sonny, do some of the dancing yourself.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE STRANGER’S WARNING
That one festive night decided the immediate future of ’Tana. All her joy in it did not prevent a decision that it should be the last in her experience, for a year to come, at least.
It was Lyster who broached the subject, and Overton looked at him closely while he talked.
“You are right,” he decided, at last; “a school is the easiest path out of this jungle, I reckon. I thought of a school, but didn’t know where – I’m not posted on such things. But if you know the trail to a good one, we’ll fix it. She has no family folks at all, so – ”
“I’d like to ask, if it’s allowable – ”
“Don’t ask me about her people,” said the other, quickly; “she wouldn’t want me to talk of them. You see, Max, all sorts get caught in whirlpools of one sort or another, when ventures are made in a new country like this, and often it’s a thoroughbred that goes under first, while a lot of scrub stock will pull through an epidemic and never miss a feed. Well, her folks belonged to the list that has gone under – speculating people, you know, who left her stranded when they started ’over the range,’ and she’s sensitive about it – has a sort of pride, too, and doesn’t want to be pitied, I guess. Anyway, I’ve promised she sha’n’t be followed by any reminder of her misfortunes, and I can’t go into details.”
“Oh, that’s all right; I’m not curious to know whether her folks had a palace or a cabin to live in. But she has brightness. I like her well enough to give up some useless pastimes that are expensive, and contribute the results to a school fund for her, if you say yes. But I should like to know if her people belonged to the class we call ladies and gentlemen – that is all.”
Overton did not answer at once. His eyes were turned toward his bandaged arm, and a little wrinkle grew between his brows.
“The man is dead, and I don’t think there’s anything for me to say as to his gentlemanly qualities,” he said at last. “He was a prospector and speculator, with an equal amount of vice and virtue in him, I suppose; just about like the rest of us. Her mother I never saw, but have reason to think she was a lady.”
“And you say every word of that as if they were drawn from you with forceps,” said Lyster, cheerily. “Well, I’ll not bother you about it again. But, you see, there is a cousin of mine at the school I spoke of, and I wanted to know because of that. It’s all right, though; my own instincts would tell me she came of good stock. But even good stock will grow wild, you know, if it doesn’t get the right sort of training. You know, old fellow, I’m downright in earnest about wanting to help you about her.”
“Yes, I know. You have, too,” said the other. “You’ve pointed out the school and all, and we see she can’t be left here.”
“Not when you are ranging around the hills, and never a man to take your place as a guard,” agreed Lyster. “I feel about two years old ever since I heard of how you kept annoyances from us last night while we were so serenely unconscious of your trials. ’Tana will scarcely look at me this morning, for no reason but that I did not divine the state of affairs and go to help you. That girl has picked up so much queer knowledge herself that she expects every one to be gifted with second sight.”
Then he told, with a good deal of amusement, the episode of the poker game and the discomfiture of the captain.
Overton said little. He was not so much shocked or vexed over it as Lyster had been, because he had lived more among people to whom such pastimes were not unusual.
“And I offered to teach her ’seven-up,’ because it was easy,” he remarked grimly. “Yes, the school is best. You see, even if I am on the ground, I’m not a fit guardian. Didn’t I give her leave to get square with the old man? While, if I’d been the right sort of a guardian, she would have been given a moral lecture on the sinfulness of revenge. I guess we’d better begin to talk school right away.”
“I imagine she’ll object at first, through force of habit, and protest that she knows enough for one girl.”
But she did not. She listened with wonder in her eyes, and something of shamed contrition in her face, and knew so well – so very well that she did not deserve it. She had wanted – really wanted to vex him when she played the cards, when she had danced past, and never let on she saw him looking somberly in at the window the night before. But in the light of morning and with the knowledge of his wounded arm, all her resentment was gone. She could scarcely speak even the words she meant to say.
“I can’t do that – go, I mean. It will cost so much, and I have no money. I can’t make any here, and – and you are not rich enough to lend it to me, even if I could pay it back some day, so – ”
“Never mind about the money; it will be got. I’m to start up north of this soon, and this doesn’t seem a good place to school you in, anyway. So, for a year or so, you go to that school down in Helena. Max knows the name of it; I forget. When you get all rigged out with an education, and have a capital of knowledge, you can talk then about the money and paying it, if it makes you feel more comfortable. But just now you be a good little girl; go down there with Max to the school, study hard, so that if I drop into a chasm some night, or am picked off by a bullet, you’ll have learned, anyway, how to look after yourself in the right way.”
“Oh, it’s Mr. Max, then, that’s planning this, is it?” she asked suddenly, and her face flushed a little – he must have thought in anger, for he said:
“Why – yes; that is – mostly. You see, ’Tana, I’ve drifted out from the ways of the world while Max has kept up with them. So he proposed – well, no matter about the plan. I’m to suggest it to you, and as it’s no loss and all gain to you, I reckon you’ll be sensible enough to say yes.”
“I will,” she answered, quietly; “it is very kind of you both to be so good to me, for I haven’t been good to you – to either of you, I’m sorry – I – maybe I’ll be better when I come back – and – maybe I can pay you some day.”
“Me? Oh, you won’t owe me anything, and I reckon you’d better not make plans about coming back here! The books and things you learn will likely turn you toward other places – finer places. This is all right for men who have money to make; but you – ”
“I’m coming back here,” she said, nodding her head emphatically. “Maybe not for always – but I’ll come back some time – I will.”
She was twisting her fingers in a nervous way, and, as he watched her, he noticed that her little brown hands were devoid of all ornament.
“Where is the ring?” he asked. “Have you lost it already?”
“No, it’s here – in my pocket,” and she drew it out that he might see. “I – I took it off this morning when I saw you were shot. You’ll laugh, I suppose; but I thought the snakes brought bad luck.”
“So you are superstitious?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I’m not afraid very often; but sometimes I think there are signs that are true. I’ve heard old folks say so, and talk of things unlucky. I took the ring off when I saw your arm.”
“But the arm was only scratched – not worth a thought from a little girl like you,” he said; “and surely not worth throwing off your jewelry for. But some day – some day of good luck, I may find you a prettier ring – one more like a girl’s ring, you know; one you can wear and not be afraid.”
“If I’m afraid, it isn’t for myself,” she said, with that old, unchildlike look he had not seen in her eyes of late. “But I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of. Have you ever heard of people who were ’hoodoos’? I guess you have. Well, sometimes I’m afraid I’m just that – like the snakes in that ring. I’m afraid I bring bad luck to people – people I like. It isn’t the harm to me that ever frightens me. I guess I can fight that; but no one can fight a ’hoodoo,’ I guess; and your arm – ”
“Oh, see here! Wake up, ’Tana, you’re dreaming! Who put that cussed nonsense into your head? ‘Hoodoo!’ Pshaw! I will have patience with you in anything but that. Did any one look at you last night as if you were a ’hoodoo’? Here comes Max; we’ll ask him.”
But she did not smile at their badinage.
“I was in earnest, and you think it only funny,” she said. “Well, maybe you won’t always laugh at it. Men who know a heap believe in ‘hoodoos.’”
“But not ’hoodoos’ possessed of the tout ensemble of Miss Rivers,” objected Lyster. “You are simply trying to scare us – me, out of the journey I hoped to make with you to Helena. You are trying to evade a year of scholastic training we have planned for you, and you would like to prophesy that the boat will blow up or the cars run off the track if you embark. But it won’t. You will say good-by to your ogre of a guardian to-morrow. You will be guarded by no less a personage than my immaculate self to the door of your academy; from which you will emerge, later on, with never a memory of ’hoodoos’ in your wise brain; and you will live to a green old age and make clay busts of us both when we are gray haired. There! I think I’m a good healthy sort of a prophet; and as a reward will you go with me to-morrow?”
“With you? Then it is you who – ”
“Who has planned the whole brilliant scheme? Exactly – the journey part of it at all events; and I’m not so modest as our friend here. I’ll take the blame of my share, and his, too, if he doesn’t speak up for himself. Here comes your new friend, Dan. Where did you pick him up?”
It was the man Harris, and beside him was the captain. They were talking with some animation of late Indian raids to the westward.
“I doubt if it was Indians at all who did the thieving,” remarked Harris; “there are always a lot of scrub whites ready to take advantage of war signals, and do devilment of that sort, made up as reds.”
“Oh, yes – some say so! That man Holly used to get the credit of that sort of renegade work. Handsome Holly he was called once. But now that he’s dead, maybe we’ll see he was not the only one to work mischief between the whites and reds.”
“Holly? Lee Holly?” asked Lyster. “Why, didn’t we hear a rumor that he wasn’t dead at all, but had been seen somewhere near Butte?”
“I didn’t,” returned Overton, who was the one addressed, “though it may be so. He’s a very slippery specimen and full of schemes, from what I hear. But he doesn’t seem to range over this territory, so I’ve never run across him. It would be like him, though, to play dead when the Government men grew warm on his trail, and he’d no doubt get plenty of help from his Indian allies.”
Harris was watching him keenly, and the careless honesty of the speaker’s face and tone evidently perplexed him, for he turned with a baffled look to the girl, who stood with down-dropped eyes, and twisted a spray of leaves nervously around her fingers. He noticed one quick, troubled glance she gave Overton, but even to his suspicious eyes it did not seem a regard given a fellow-conspirator.
“I believe it was the doctor I heard speak of the rumor that Holly was yet above ground,” said Lyster. “The mail came up yesterday, and perhaps he found it in the papers. Don’t think I had heard of the man before. Is he one of the important people up here?”
“Rather,” remarked Overton, “an accomplished crook who has dabbled in several trades in the Columbia River region. The latest was a wholesale horse steal from a ranch over in Washington – Indian work, with him as leader. The regulars from the fort got after them, there was an ugly fight, and the reds reported Holly as killed. That is the last I heard of him. You were asking me yesterday if he ever prospected in our valley, didn’t you?” he asked, turning to Harris.
“A man made undue importance of by the stupid Indians,” declared Captain Leek. “He humored their superstitions and played medicine man with them, I’ve heard; and he had a boy for a partner – a young slip the gamblers called ’Monte’ down in Cœur d’Alene. Some said it was his son.”
“A fine instructor for youth,” observed Lyster. “Who could expect anything but vice from a man who had such a boyhood?”
“But you would,” said ’Tana, suddenly, “if you knew that boy when he grew to be a man. If he was bad, you’d want him to get off the earth where you walked; and you never once would stop to ask if he was brought up right or not – you know you wouldn’t – nobody does, I guess. I don’t know why it is, but it seems all wrong to me. Maybe, though, when I go to school, and learn things, I will think like the rest, and not care.”
Lyster shrugged his shoulders and looked after her as she vanished into the regions where Mrs. Huzzard was concocting dishes for the mid-day meal.
“I doubt if she thinks like the rest,” he remarked. “How fiery she is, and how independent in her views of things.”
But Overton smiled at her curt speech.
“Poor ’Tana has lived among rough scenes until she learns to judge quickly, and for herself,” he said. “Her words are true enough, too; she may have known just such boys as Holly’s clever little partner and seen how hard it was for them to be any good. I wonder now what has become of young ’Monte’ since Holly disappeared. He would be a good one to follow, if there is doubt as to Holly’s death being a fact. I believe there was a reward out for him some time ago, to stimulate lagging justice. Don’t know if it’s withdrawn or not.”
“Square,” decided Harris, in silent communion with himself, as he surveyed Overton; “dead square, and don’t scent the trail. I’d like to know what their little game is with him. Some devilment, sure.”
On one pretext and another he kept close to Overton. He was studying the stalwart, easy-going keeper of the peace, and Dan, who had a sort of compassion for all who were halt, or blind, or homeless, took kindly enough to the semi-paralyzed stranger. Harris seemed to belong nowhere in particular, yet knew each trail of the Kootenai and Columbia country, knew each drift where the yellow sands were found – each mine where the silver hunt paid best returns.
“You’ve prospected some, I see, even if you don’t get over the ground very fast,” Dan remarked; “and with it all, I reckon you’ve staked out some pay claims for yourself?”
The face of Harris contracted in a swift frown; he drew a long breath, and his clasped hands tightened on each other.
“I did,” he said, in a choked, nervous sort of way; “I did. If I could tell you of it, I would. You’re the sort of man I’d – But never mind. I’m not well yet – not strong enough to get excited over it. I’ve got to take things easy for a spell, or another stroke of this paralysis will come as my share. That handicaps me considerable. I was – was upset by something unexpected last night, and I’ve had a queer, shaky feeling ever since; can’t articulate clear. Did you notice? The – the only thing under God’s heaven I’m afraid of is that paralysis – that it will catch me again before I get my work done; and to-day – ”
“Don’t talk of it,” advised Overton, as he noticed how the man’s voice hesitated and trembled, how excitable he was over the subject of his mineral finds and his threatened helplessness. “Don’t think of it, and you’ll come out all right yet. If I can do anything for you – ”
The other man laughed in a spasmodic, contemptuous fashion.
“For me?” he said. “You can’t. I thought you could, but I was on a blind trail – you can’t. I can give you a lift, though – yes, I can. It’s about – about that girl. You – you tried to guard her last night, as if she was a flower the rough wind must not blow on. I know – I watched you. I’ve been there, and know.”
“Know what? You’re an infernal fool!” burst out Dan, with all his good nature out of sight. “No hints about the girl, or – or anything else! I won’t have it!”
“It’s no hint; facts are all I’d mention to you, and I’d do that just because I think you’re square. And they – they are playing you. See? For he ain’t dead. I don’t know what their game is with you, but he ain’t dead; and there – there’s no telling what scheme he’s got her into this – this territory for. So I want you to know. I don’t want you to be caught in any trap of theirs. She – she looks all right; but he’s a devil – a thing infernal – a – ”
Overton caught him by one arm, and swung him around like a child.
“Speak clear. No more of your blasted stuttering or beating away from points; who is the man you talk of? Who is playing with me? Now speak.”
“Why, Monte, the girl; Monte and Lee Holly. He’s somewhere alive – that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I was hunting for him when I found her laying low here, don’t you understand? You stare so. It is Lee Holly and – Ah – my – God!”
The last words were gurgled in his throat; his face whitened, and he sank to the ground as though his bones had suddenly been converted into jelly – a strange, shapeless heap of humanity as he lay at Overton’s feet. Overton bent over him, and after a moment of blank amaze, lifted the helpless head, and almost dropped it again, when the eyes, appealing and keenly conscious, met his own. There was a queer chuckling sound in the man’s throat; he was trying to speak, but could not. The secret he was trying to tell was buried back of those speechless lips, and one more stroke of the doom he feared had overtaken him.