Told in the Hills: A Novel

Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw

They did not speak, but after a little of the warm liquor had forced itself down the slight throat, Rachel left the cup in the mother's hands, and reached again for the whisky.

"You can get more from Davy MacDougall," she said, in a half-conciliatory tone at this wholesale confiscation; "and—and you might give him some ammunition—not much."

"What a vanishing of resolves!" he remarked, measuring out an allowance of shot; "and all because of a copper-colored papoose. So you have a bit of natural, womanly weakness?"

The girl did not answer; there was a certain air of elation about her as she undid a scarf from her throat and wrapped it about the little morsel of humanity.

"Go past the sheep ranch," she directed the passive warrior, who stood gazing at the wealth in whisky and powder. "Do you know where it is—Hardy's? Tell them I sent you—show them that," and she pointed to the scarf; "tell them what you need for squaw and papoose; they will find it."

Skulking Brave signified that he understood, and then led Betty toward her.

"He is not very hospitable," she confided to Stuart, in the white man's tongue, "else he would not be in such haste to get rid of us."

And although their host did not impress one as having a highly strung nervous organization, yet his manner during their halt gave them the idea that he was ill at ease. They did not tarry long, but having given what help they could, rode away, lighter of whisky and ammunition, and the girl, strange enough, seemed lighter of heart.

After they had reached a point high above the little creek, they turned for a look over the country passed. It lay in brown and blue-gray patches, with dashes of dark-green on the highlands, where the pines grew.

"What is the white thing moving along that line of timber?" asked the girl, pointing in the direction they had come. It was too far off to see clearly, but with the aid of Stuart's field-glass, it was decided to be the interesting family they had stopped with a little ways back. And the white thing noticed was a horse they were riding. It was getting over the ground at the fastest rate possible with its triple weight, for the squaw was honored with a seat back of her lord.

"I imagined they were traveling on foot, didn't you?" asked Stuart.

"What a fool he was to steal a white horse!" remarked the girl contemptuously; "he might know it would be spotted for miles."

A TRIO IN WITCHLAND.

The noon was passed when they reached the cabin on Scot's Mountain, and found its owner on the point of leaving for the Maple range. But quickly replacing his gun on its pegs, he uncovered the fire, set on the coffee-pot, and, with Rachel's help, in a very short time had a steaming-hot dinner of broiled bear steaks and "corn-dodgers," with the additional delicacy of a bowl of honey from the wild bees' store.

"I have some laid by as a bit of a gift to Mr. Hardy's lady," he confided to Rachel. "I found this fellow," tapping the steak, "in one o' the traps as I was a-comin' my way home; an' the fresh honey on his paws helped me smell out where he had spied it, and a good lot o' it there was that Mr. Grizzly had na reached."

"See here," said Stuart, noting that, because of their visit, the old man had relinquished all idea of going to the woods, "we must not interfere with your plans, for at best we have but a short time to stay." And then he explained the reason.

When the question of snow was taken into account, Davy agreed that Stuart's decision was perhaps wise; but "he was main sorry o' the necessity."

"An' it's to Owens ye be taken' the trail?" he asked. "Eh, but that's curious now. I have a rare an' good friend thereabouts that I would be right glad to send a word to; an' I was just about to take a look at his tunnel an' the cabin, when ye come the day, just to see it was all as it should be ere the snows set in."

"I should be delighted to be of any service to you," said Stuart warmly; "and to carry a message is a very slight one. Who is your friend?"

"It's just the man Genesee, who used to be my neighbor. But he's left me alone now these many months—about a year;" and he turned to Rachel for corroboration.

"More than a year," she answered briefly.

"Well, it is now. I'm losin' track o' dates these late days; but you're right, lass, an' the winter would ha' been ower lonely if it had na been for yourself. Think o' that, Charlie Stuart: this slim bit o' womankind substituting herself for a rugged build o' a man taller than you by a half-head, an' wi' no little success, either. But," he added teasingly, "ye owed me the debt o' your company for the sending o' him away; so ye were only honest after all, Rachel Hardy."

Rachel laughed, thinking it easier, perhaps, to dispose of the question thus than by any disclaimer—especially with the eyes of Stuart on her as they were.

"You are growing to be a tease," she answered. "You will be saying I sent Kalitan and Talapa, next."

"But Talapa has na gone from the hills?"

"Hasn't she? Well, I saw her on the trail, going direct south, this morning, as fast as she could get over the ground, with a warrior and a papoose as companions."

"Did ye now? Well, good riddance to them. They ha' been loafing around the Kootenai village ever since I sent them from the cabin in the summer. That Talapa was a sleepy-eyed bit o' old Nick. I told Genesee that same from the first, when he was wasting his stock o' pity on her. Ye see," he said, turning his speech to Stuart, "a full-blooded Siwash has some redeeming points, and a character o' their own; but the half-breeds are a part white an' a part red, with a good wheen o' the devil's temper thrown in."

"She didn't appear to have much of the last this morning," observed Rachel. "She looked pretty miserable."

"Ah, well, tak' the best o' them, an' they look that to the whites. An' so they're flittin' to the Reservation to live off the Government? Skulking Bob'll be too lazy to be even takin' the chance o' fightin' with his people against the Blackfeet, if trouble should come; and there's been many a straggler from the rebels makin' their way north to the Blackfeet, an' that is like to breed mischief."

"And your friend is at Owens?"

"Yes—or thereabouts. One o' the foremost o' their scouts, they tell me, an' a rare good one he is, with no prejudice on either side o' the question."

"I should think, being a white man, his sympathies would lean toward his own race," observed Stuart.

"Well, that's as may chance. There's many the man who finds his best friends in strange blood. Genesee is thought no little of among the Kootenais—more, most like, than he would be where he was born and bred. Folk o' the towns know but little how to weigh a man."

"And is he from the cities?"

For the first time Davy MacDougall looked up quickly.

"I know not," he answered briefly, "an', not giving to you a short answer, I care not. Few questions make long friends in the hills."

Stuart was somewhat nonplussed at the bluntness of the hint, and Rachel was delighted.

"You see," she reminded him wickedly, "one can be an M. D., an L. S. D., or any of the annexations, without Kootenai people considering his education finished. But look here, Davy MacDougall, we only ran up to say 'klahowya,' and have got to get back to-night; so, if you are going over to Tamahnous cabin, don't stop on our account; we can go part of the way with you."

"But ye can go all the way, instead o' but a part, an' then no be out o' your road either," he said, with eagerness that showed how loath he was to part from his young companions. "Ye know," he added, turning to Rachel, "it is but three miles by the cross-cut to Genesee's, while by the valley ye would cover eight on the way. Now, the path o'er the hills is no fit for the feet o' a horse, except it be at the best o' seasons; but this is an ower good one, with neither the rain nor the ice; an' if ye will risk it—"

Of course they would risk it; and with a draught apiece from an odorous, dark-brown jug, and the gift of a flask that found its way to Stuart's pocket, they started.

They needed that swallow of brandy as a brace against the cold wind of the hills. It hustled through the pines like winged fiends let loose from the north. Dried berries from the bushes and cones from the trees were sent pattering to sleep for the winter, and the sighs through the green roofing, and the moans from twisted limbs, told of the hardihood needed for life up there. The idea impressed Stuart so much that he gave voice to it, and was laughed at grimly by the old mountaineer.

"Oh, well, it just takes man to be man, an' that's all when all's said," he answered "To be sure, there be times when one canna stir for the snow wreaths, but that's to be allowed for; an' then ye may ha' took note that my cabin is in shelter o' all but the south wind, an' that's a great matter. Men who live in the mountain maun get used to its frolics; but it's an ugly bit," he acknowledged, as they stopped to rest and look up over the seemingly pathless way they had come; "but I've been thankful for it many's the time, when, unlooked for, Genesee and Mowitza would show their faces at my door, an' she got so she could make that climb in the dark—think o' that! Ah, but she was the wise one!"

Stuart glanced at Rachel, who was more likely than himself to understand what was meant by the "wise one;" but he did not again venture a question. Mowitza was another squaw, he supposed, and one of the companions of the man Genesee. And the other one they had passed in the morning?—her name also was connected with the scout whom the white girl seemed to champion or condemn as the fancy pleased her. And Stuart, as a stranger to the social system of the wilderness, had his curiosity widely awakened. A good deal of it was directed to Rachel herself. Hearing MacDougall speak of the man to her, he could understand that she had no lack of knowledge in that direction—and the direction was one of which the right sort of a girl was supposed to be ignorant; or, if not ignorant, at least to conceal her wisdom in the wise way of her sisters.

This one did nothing of the sort; and the series of new impressions received made him observe the girl with a scrutiny not so admiring as he had always, until now, given her. He was irritated with himself that it was so, yet his ideas of what a woman should be were getting some hard knocks at her hands.

Suddenly the glisten of the little lake came to them through the gray trunks of the trees, and a little later they had descended the series of small circular ridges that terraced the cove from the timber to the waters, that was really not much more than an immense spring that happened to bubble up where there was a little depression to spread itself in and show to advantage.

"But a mill would be turned easily by that same bit o' water," observed MacDougall; "an' there's where Genesee showed the level head in locating his claim where he did."

"It looks like wasted power, placed up here," observed Stuart, "for it seems about the last place in Christendom for a mill."

"Well, so it may look to many a pair o' eyes," returned the old man, with a wink and a shrug that was indescribable, but suggested a vast deal of unuttered knowledge; "but the lad who set store by it because o' the water-power was a long ways from a fool, I can tell ye."

Again Stuart found himself trying to count the spokes of some shadowy wheels within wheels that had a trick of eluding him; and he felt irritatingly confident that the girl looking at him with quizzical, non-committal eyes could have enlightened him much as to the absent ruler of this domain, who, according to her own words, was utterly degraded, yet had a trick of keeping his personality such a living thing after a year's absence.

The cabin was cold with the chill dreariness of any house that is left long without the warmth of an embodied human soul. Only the wandering, homeless spirits of the air had passed in and out, in and out of its chinks, sighing through them for months, until, on entrance, one felt an intuitive, sympathetic shiver for their loneliness.

A fire was soon crackling on the hearth; but the red gleams did not dance so merrily on the rafters as they had the first time she had been warmed at the fire-place—the daylight was too merciless a rival. It penetrated the corners and showed up the rude bunk and some mining implements; from a rafter hung a roll of skins done up in bands of some pliable withes.

Evidently Genesee's injunction had been obeyed, for even the pottery, and reed baskets, and bowls still shone from the box of shelves.

"It's a mystery to me those things are not stolen by the Indians," observed Stuart, noticing the lack of any fastening on the door, except a bar on the inside.

"There's no much danger o' that," said the old man grimly, "unless it be by a Siwash who knows naught o' the country. The Kootenai people would do no ill to Genesee, nor would any Injun when he lives in the Tamahnous ground."

"What territory is that?"

"Just the territory o' witchcraft—no less. The old mine and the spring, with the circle o' steps down to it, they let well alone, I can tell ye; and as for stealin', they'd no take the worth o' a tenpenny nail from between the two hills that face each other, an' the rocks o' them 'gives queer echoes that they canna explain. Oh, yes, they have their witches, an' their warlocks, an' enchanted places, an' will no go against their belief, either."

"But," said Rachel, with a slight hesitation, "Talapa was not afraid to live here."

"An' did ye not know, then, that she was not o' Kootenai stock?" asked the old man. "Well, she was not a bit o' it; Genesee bought her of a beast of a Blackfoot."

"Bought her?" asked Stuart, and even Rachel opened her eyes in attention—perhaps, after all, not knowing so much as the younger man had angrily given her credit for.

"Just that; an' dear she would ha' been at most any price. But she was a braw thing to look at, an' young enough to be sorry o'er. An' so when he come across her takin' a beating like a mule he could na stand it; an' the only way he could be sure o' putting an end to it was by maken' a bargain; an' that's just what he did, an' a'most afore he had time to take thought, the girl was his, an' he had to tek her with him. Well," and the old man laughed comically at the remembrance, "you should ha' seen him at the comin' home!—tried to get her off his hands by leavin' her an' a quitclaim at my cabin; but I'd have none o' that—no half-breed woman could stay under a roof o' mine; an' the finish o' it was he hed to bring her here to keep house for him, an' a rueful commencement it was. Then it was but a short while 'til he got hurt one day in the tunnel, an' took a deal o' care before he was on his feet again. Well, ye know womankind make natural nurses, an' by the time she had him on the right trail again he had got o' the mind that Talapa was a necessity o' the cabin; an' so ye may know she stayed."

"In what tunnel was he injured?" asked Stuart.

"Why, just—"

"There's your horse ranging calmly up toward the timber," observed Rachel, turning from the window to Stuart. "Do you want to walk to the ranch?"

"Well, not to-day;" and a moment later he was out of the door and running across the terraced meadow.

"Don't tell him too much about the tunnel," suggested the girl, when she and the old man were alone.

"Why, lass,"—he began; but she cut him short brusquely, keeping her eye on the form on the hill-side.

"Oh, he may be all right; but it isn't like you, Davy MacDougall, to tell all you know to strangers, even if they do happen to have Scotch names—you clannish old goose!"

"But the lad's all right."

"May be he is; but you've told him enough of the hills now to send him away thinking we are all a rather mixed and objectionable lot. Oh, yes, he does too!" as Davy tried to remonstrate. "I don't care how much you tell him about the Indians; but that tunnel may have something in it that Genesee wouldn't want Eastern speculators spying into while he's away—do you see?"

Evidently he did, and the view was not one flattering to his judgment, for, in order to see more clearly, he took off his fur cap, scratched his head, and then replacing the covering with a great deal of energy, he burst out:

"Well, damn a fool, say I."

Rachel paid not the slightest attention to this profane plea.

"I suppose he's all right," she continued; "only when somebody's interest is at stake, especially a friend's, we oughtn't to take things for granted, and keeping quiet hurts no one, unless it be a stranger's curiosity."

The old man looked at her sharply. "Ye dinna like him, then?"

She hesitated, her eyes on the tall form leading back the horse. Just then there seemed a strange likeness to Mowitza and Genesee in their manner, for the beast was tossing its head impatiently, and he was laughing, evidently teasing it with the fact of its capture.

"Yes, I do like him," she said at last; "there is much about him to like. But we must not give away other people's affairs because of that."

"Right you are, my lass," answered Davy; "an' it's rare good sense ye show in remindin' me o' the same. It escapes me many's the time that he's a bit of a stranger when all's said; an' do ye know, e'en at the first he had no the ways of a stranger to me. I used to fancy that something in his build, or it may ha' been but the voice, was like to—"

"You are either too old or not old enough to have fancies, Davy MacDougall," interrupted the girl briskly, as Stuart re-entered. "Well, is it time to be moving?"

He looked at his watch.

"Almost; but come to the fire and get well warmed before we start. I believe it grows colder; here, take this seat."

"Well, I will not," she answered, looking about her; "don't let your gallantry interfere with your comfort, for I've a chair of my own when I visit this witchy quarter of the earth—yes, there it is."

And from the corner by the bunk she drew forward the identical chair on which she had sat through the night at her only other visit. But from her speech Stuart inferred that this time was but one of the many.

"What are you going to do here, Davy MacDougall?" she asked, drawing her chair close beside him and glancing comprehensively about the cabin; "weather-board it up for winter?"

"Naw, scarcely that," he answered good-humoredly; "but just to gather up the blankets or skins or aught that the weather or the rats would lay hold of, and carry them across the hills to my own camp till the spring comes; mayhaps he may come with it."

The hope in his voice was not very strong, and the plaintiveness in it was stronger than he knew. The other two felt it, and were silent.

"An' will ye be tellin' him for me," he continued, after a little, to Stuart, "that all is snug an' safe, an' that I'll keep them so, an' a welcome with them, against his return? An' just mention, too, that his father, Grey Eagle, thinks the time is long since he left, an' that the enemy—Time—is close on his trail. An'—an' that the day he comes back will be holiday in the hills."

"The last from Grey Eagle or yourself?" asked Stuart teasingly. But the girl spoke up, covering the old man's momentary hesitation.

"From me," she said coolly; "if any name is needed to give color to so general a desire, you can use mine."

His face flushed; he looked as if about to speak to her, but, instead, his words were to MacDougall.

"I will be very glad to carry the word to your friend," he said; "it is but a light weight."

"Yes, I doubt na it seems so to the carrier, but I would no think it so light a thing to ha' word o' the lad. We ha' been neighbors, ye see, this five year, with but little else that was civilized to come near us. An' there's a wide difference atween neighbors o' stone pavements an' neighbors o' the hills—a fine difference."

"Yes, there is," agreed the girl; and from their tones one would gather the impression that all the splendors of a metropolis were as nothing when compared with the luxuries of "shack" life in the "bush."

"Can ye hit the trail down at the forks without me along?" asked MacDougall, with a sudden remembrance of the fact that Rachel did not know the way so well from the "Place of the Tamahnous" as she did from Scot's Mountain. She nodded her head independently.

"I can, Davy MacDougall. And you are paying me a poor compliment when you ask me so doubtfully. I've been prowling through the bush enough for this past year to know it for fifty miles around, instead of twenty. And now if your highness thinks we've had our share of this fire, let us 'move our freight,' 'hit the breeze,' or any other term of the woolly West that means action, and get up and git."

"I am at your service," answered Stuart, with a graciousness of manner that made her own bravado more glaring by contrast. He could see she assumed much for the sake of mischief and irritation to himself; and his tone in reply took an added intonation of refinement; but the hint was lost on her—she only laughed.

"I tell you what it is, Davy MacDougall," she remarked to that gentleman, "this slip of your nation has been planted in the wrong century. He belongs to the age of lily-like damsels in sad-colored frocks, and knights of high degree on bended knee and their armor hung to the rafters. I get a little mixed in my dates sometimes, but believe it was the age when caps and bells were also in fashion."

"Dinna mind her at all," advised the old man; "she'd be doin' ye a good turn wi' just as ready a will as she would mak' sport o' ye. Do I not know her?—ah, but I do!"

"So does the Stuart," said Rachel; "and as for doing him a good turn, I proved my devotion in that line this morning, when I saved him from a lonely, monotonous ride—didn't I?" she added, glancing up at him.

"You look positively impish," was the only reply he made; and returning her gaze with one that was half amusement, half vexation, he went out for the horses.

"You see, he didn't want me at all, Davy MacDougall," confided the girl, and if she felt any chagrin she concealed it admirably. "But they've been talking some about Genesee down at the ranch, and—and Stuart's interest was aroused. I didn't know how curious he might be—Eastern folks are powerful so"—and in the statement and adoption of vernacular she seemed to forget how lately she was of the East herself; "and I concluded he might ask questions, or encourage you to talk about—well, about the tunnel, you know; so I just came along to keep the trail free of snags—see?"

The old man nodded, and watched her in a queer, dubious way; as she turned, a moment later, to speak to Stuart at the door, she noticed it, and laughed.

"You think I'm a bit loony, don't you, Davy MacDougall? Well, I forgive you. May be, some day, you'll see I'm not on a blind trail. Come and see us soon, and give me a chance to prove my sanity."

"Strange that any mind could doubt it," murmured Stuart. "Come, we haven't time for proofs of the question now. Good-bye, MacDougall; take care of yourself for the winter. Perhaps I'll get back in the summer to see how well you have done so."

A hearty promise of welcome, a hand-clasp, a few more words of admonition and farewell, and then the two young people rode away across the ground deemed uncanny by the natives; and the old man went back to his lonely task.

On reaching the ranch at dusk, it was Rachel who was mildly hilarious, seeming to have changed places with the gay chanter of the dawn. He was not sulky, but something pretty near it was in his manner, and rather intensified under Miss Hardy's badinage.

She told the rest how he divided his whisky with the squaw; hinted at a fear that he intended adopting the papoose; gave them an account of the conversation between himself and Skulking Brave; and otherwise made their trip a subject for ridicule.

"Did you meet with Indians?" asked Tillie, trying to get the girl down to authentic statements.

"Yes, my dear, we did, and I sent them home to you—or told them to come; but they evidently had not time for morning calls."

"Were they friendly?"

"Pretty much—enough so to ask for powder and shot. None of the men sighted them?"

"No."

"And no other Indians?"

"No—why?"

"Only that I would not like Talapa to be roughly unhorsed."

"Talapa! Why, Rachel, that's—"

"Yes, of course it is—with a very promising family in tow. Say, suppose you hustle Aunty up about that supper, won't you? And have her give the Stuart something extra nice; he has had a hard day of it."

A VISIT IN THE NIGHT-TIME.

Yahka kelapie.

The snows had dropped a soft cloak over the Kootenai hills, and buried the valleys in great beds of crystallized down. Rachel's prophecy had proven a true one, for the clouds that day had been a visiting-card from winter.

That day was two weeks gone now; so was Stuart's leave-taking, and at the ranch life had dropped into the old lines, but with an impression of brightness lost. Miss Margaret had not yet got over the habit of turning quickly if anyone entered the room, and showing her disappointment in a frown when it was not the one looked for.

Aunty Luce declared she "nevah did see a chile so petted on one who wasn't no kin."

All of them discovered they had been somewhat "petted" on the genial nature. Again the evenings were passed with magazines or cards; during his stay they had revived the primitive custom of taking turns telling stories, and in that art Stuart had proven himself a master, sometimes recounting actual experiences of self or friends, again giving voice to some remembered gem of literature; but, whatever the theme, it was given life, through the sympathetic tendencies of the man who had so much the timber of an actor—or rather an artist—the spirit that tends to reproduce or create.

If Rachel missed him, she kept quiet about it, and ridiculed the rest if any regrets came to her ears. No one minded that much; Rachel ridiculed everyone—even herself. Sometimes she thought Fate seemed more than willing to help her. One night, two weeks after that ride from the "Place of the Tamahnous," she was struck with a new conviction of the fact.

Andrews had gone to Holland's for the mail and domestic miscellany. A little after sun-up he had started, and the darkness was three hours old, and yet no sign or sound. The rest had finally given up the idea of getting any letters that night, and had gone to bed. As usual, Rachel—the night-owl of the family—was left the last guard at the warm hearth. Upstairs she could hear Jim's voice in the "boys'" room, telling Ivans some exploit whose character was denoted by one speech that made its way through the ceiling of pine boards:

"Yes, sir; my horse left his'n half a length behind every time it hit the ground."

Ivans grunted. Evidently he had listened to recitals from the same source before, and was too tired for close attention; anyway, the remarks of this Truthful James drifted into a monologue, and finally into silence, and no sound of life was left in the house.

She had been reading a book Stuart had sent back to her by Hardy, the day he left. She wondered a little why, for he had never spoken of it to her. It was a novel, a late publication, and by an author whose name she had seen affixed to magazine work; and the charm in it was undeniable—the charm of quiet hearts and restful pictures, that proved the writer a lover of the tender, sympathetic tones of life, rather than the storms and battles of human emotions.

It held the girl with a puzzling, unusual interest—one that in spite of her would revert from the expressed thoughts on the paper to the personality of the man who had sent it to her, and she found in many instances, a mystifying likeness.

She sat there thinking drowsily over it, and filled with the conviction that it was really time to go to bed; but the big chair was so comfortable, and the little simmer of the burning wood was like a lullaby, and she felt herself succumbing, without the slightest rebellion, to the restful influence. She was aroused by the banging of a door somewhere, and decided that Andrews had at last returned; and remembering the number of things he had to bring in, concluded to go out and help him. Her impulse was founded as much on economy as generosity, for the late hour was pretty good proof that Andrews was comfortably drunk—also that breakages were likely to be in order.

It was cloudy—only the snow gave light; the air was not cold, but had in it the softness of rain. Over it she walked quickly, fully awakened by the thought of the coffee getting a bath of vinegar, or the mail mucilaged together with molasses.

"Oh, here you are at last!" she remarked, in that inane way people have when they care not whether you are here or in the other place. "You took your own time."

"Well, I didn't take any other fellow's!" returned the man from the dark corner where he was unsaddling the horse.

Andrews was usually very obsequious to Miss Rachel, and she concluded he must be pretty drunk.

"I came out to help you with the things," she remarked from her post in the door-way; "where are they?"

"I've got 'em myself," came the gruff tones again from the corner. "I reckon I'll manage without help. You'd better skip for the house—you'll catch cold likely."

"Why, it isn't cold—are you? I guess Aunty left a lunch for you. I'll go and warm the coffee."

She started, and then stopped.

"Say, did you get any letters for me?"

"No."

With a grumble about her ill-luck, she started back toward the house, the late arrival following a little ways behind with something over his shoulder. Once she looked back.

"I rather think Andrews gets on dignified drunks," she soliloquized; "he is walking pretty straight, anyway."

She set the coffee-pot on the coals and glanced at the bundle he had dropped just inside the door—it was nothing but a blanket and a saddle.

"Well, upon my word!" she began, and rose to her feet; but she did not say any more, for, in turning to vent her displeasure on Andrews, she was tongue-tied by the discovery that it was not he who had followed her from the stable.

"Genesee!" she breathed, in a tone a little above a whisper. "Alah mika chahko!"

She was too utterly astonished either to move toward him or offer her hand; but the welcome in her Indian words was surely plain enough for him to understand. It was just like him, however, not to credit it, and he smiled a grim understanding of his own, and walked over to a chair.

"Yes, that's who it is," he remarked. "I am sorry, for the sake of your hopes, that it isn't the other fellow; but—here I am."

He had thrown his hat beside him and leaned back in the big chair, shutting his eyes sleepily. She had never seen him look so tired.

"Tillikum, I am glad to see you again," she said, going to him and holding out her hand. He smiled, but did not open his eyes.

"It took you a long time to strike that trail," he observed. "What brought you out to the stable?"

"I thought you were Andrews, and that you were drunk and would break things."

"Oh!"

"And I am glad to see you, Jack."

He opened his eyes then. "Thank you, little girl. That is a good thing for a man to hear, and I believe you. Come here. It was a good thing for me to get that word from Kalitan, too. I reckon you know all that, though, or you wouldn't have sent it."

She did not answer, but stooped to lift the pot of coffee back from the blaze. The action recalled him to the immediate practical things, and he said:

"Think I can stay all night here?"

"I don't know of any reason to prevent it."

"Mowitza was used up, and I wanted a roof for her; but I didn't allow to come to the house myself."

"Where would you have slept?"

"In my blanket, on the hay."

"Just as if we would let you do that on our place!"

"No one would have known it if you had kept away from the stable, and in your bed, where you ought to be."

"Shall I go there at once, or pour your coffee first?"

"A cup of coffee would be a treat; I'm dead tired."

The coffee was drank, and the lunch for Andrews was appropriated for Genesee.

"Have you come back to the Kootenai country for good?" she asked, after furnishing him with whatever she could find in the pantry without awakening the rest.

"I don't know—it may be for bad," he replied doubtfully. "I've taken the trail north to sound any tribes that are hostile, and if troops are needed they are to follow me."

"Up into this country?"

"I reckon so. Are you afraid of fighting?"

She did not answer. A new idea, a sudden remembrance, had superseded that of Indian warfare.

"How long since you left Fort Owens?" she asked.

"Fifteen days. Why?"

"A friend of MacDougall's started in that direction about two weeks ago. Davy sent a kind message by him; but you must have passed it on the way."

"Likely; I've been in the Flathead country, and that's wide of the trail to Owens. Who was the man?"

"His name is Stuart."

He set the empty cup down, and looked in the fire for a moment with a steadiness that made the girl doubt if he had either heard or noticed; but after a little he spoke.

"What was that you said?"

"That the man's name was Stuart."

"Young or old?"

"Younger than you."

"And he has gone to Fort Owens?"

"Started for there, I said."

"Oh! then you haven't much faith in a tenderfoot getting through the hostiles or snow-banks?"

"How do you know he is a tenderfoot?"

He glanced up; she was looking at him with as much of a question in her eyes as her words.

"Well, I reckon I don't," he answered, picking up his hat as if to end the conversation. "I knew a man called Stuart once, but I don't know this one. Now, have you any pressing reason for loafing down here any longer? If not, I'll take my blanket and that lounge and get some sleep. I've been thirty-six hours in the saddle."

In vain she tried to prevail on him to go upstairs and go to bed "right."

"This is right enough for me," he answered, laying his hat and gloves on a table and unfastening his spurs. "No, I won't go up to the men's room. Good-night."

"But, Jack—look here—"

"I can't—too sleepy to look anywhere, or see if I did look;" and his revolvers and belt were laid beside the growing collection on the table.

"But Hen will scold me for not giving you better lodging."

"Then he and another man will have a shooting-match before breakfast to-morrow. Are you going?"

He was beginning to deliberately unfasten his neck-gear of scarlet and bronze. She hesitated, as if to make a final protest, but failed and fled; and as the door closed behind her, she heard another half-laughing "Klahowya!"

Early in the morning she was down-stairs, to find Aunty Luce half wild with terror at the presence of a stranger who had taken possession of the sitting-room during the night.

"Cain't see his face for the blanket, honey," she whispered shrilly, "but he's powerful big; an'—an' just peep through the door at the guns and things—it's wah times right ovah again, shueh as I'm tellen' yo', chile."

"Be quiet, Aunty, and get breakfast; it's a friend of ours."

"Hi-yi! I know all 'bout them kind o' friends, honey; same kind as comes South in wah times, a trampen' into houses o' quality folks an sleepen' whah they liked, an' callen' theyselves friends. He's a moven' now!—less call the folks!"

The attempted yell was silenced by Rachel clapping her hand over the full lips and holding her tightly.

"Don't be a fool!" she admonished the old woman impatiently. "I let the man in last night; it's all right. Go and get him a good breakfast."

Aunty Luce eyed the girl as if she thought her a conspirator against the safety of the house, and despite precautions, managed to slip upstairs to Tillie with a much-garbled account of thieves in the night, and wartimes, and tramps, and Miss Rache.

Much mystified, the little woman dressed quickly, and came down the stairs to find her husband shaking hands quite heartily with Genesee. Instantly she forgot the multitudinous reasons there were for banning him from the bosom of one's family, and found herself telling him he was very welcome.

"I reckon in your country a man would wait to hear someone say that before stowing his horse in their stables, or himself in their beds," he observed.

His manner was rather quiet, but one could see that the heartiness of their greeting was a great pleasure, and, it may be, a relief.

"Do you call that a bed?" asked Tillie, with contemptuous warmth. "I do think, Mr. Genesee, you might have wakened some of us, and given us a chance to treat a guest to something better."

"I suppose, then, I am not counted in with the family," observed Rachel, meekly, from the background. "I was on hand to do the honors, but wasn't allowed to do them. I even went to the stable to receive the late-comer, and was told to skip into the house, and given a general understanding that I interfered with his making himself comfortable in the hay-mow."

"Did she go out there at night, and alone, after we were all in bed?" And Tillie's tone indicated volumes of severity.

"Yes," answered Genesee; for Rachel, with a martyr-like manner, said nothing, and awaited her lecture; "she thought it was your man Andrews."

"Yes, and she would have gone just as quickly if it had been Indians—or—or—anybody. She keeps me nervous half the time with her erratic ways."

"I rather think she's finding fault with me for giving you that coffee and letting you sleep on the lounge," said Rachel; and through Tillie's quick disclaimer her own short-comings were forgotten, at least for the time. The little matron's caution, that always lagged woefully behind her impulse, obtruded itself on her memory several times before the breakfast was over; and thinking of the reasons why a man of such character should not be received as a friend by ladies, especially girls, she was rather glad when she heard him say he was to push on into the hills as soon as possible.

"I only stopped last night because I had to; Mowitza and I were both used up. I was trying to make MacDougall's, but when I crossed the trail to your place, I reckoned we would fasten to it—working through the snow was telling on her; but she is all right this morning."

Rachel told him of her visit to the old man, and his care of the cabin on the Tamahnous ground; of rumors picked up from the Kootenai tribe as to the chance of trouble with the Blackfeet, and many notes that were of interest to this hunter of feeling on the Indian question. He commented on her Chinook, of which she had gained considerable knowledge in the past year, and looked rather pleased when told it had been gained from Kalitan.

"You may see him again if I have to send for troops up here, and it looks that way now," he remarked, much to the terror and satisfaction of Aunty Luce, who was a house divided against itself in her terror of Indian trouble and her desire to prove herself a prophetess.

Jim was all anticipation. After a circus or a variety show, nothing had for him the charm that was exerted by the prospect of a fight; but his hopes in that direction were cooled by the scout's statement that the troops were not coming with the expectation of war, but simply to show the northern tribes its futility, and that the Government was strengthening its guard for protection all along the line.

"Then yer only ringin' in a bluff on the hostiles!" ventured the sanguinary hopeful disgustedly. "I counted on business if the 'yaller' turned out," meaning by the "yaller" the cavalry, upon whose accoutrements the yellow glints show.

"Never mind, sonny," said Genesee; "if we make a bluff, it won't be on an empty hand. But I must take the trail again, and make up for time lost in sleep here."

"When may we look for you back?"

It was Hardy who spoke, but something had taken the free-heartiness out of his tones; he looked just a trifle uncomfortable. Evidently Tillie had been giving him a hint of second thoughts, and while trying to adopt them they fitted his nature too clumsily not to be apparent.

His guest, however, had self-possession enough for both.

"Don't look for me," he advised, taking in the group with a comprehensive glance; "that is, don't hurt the sight of your eyes in the business; the times are uncertain, and I reckon I'm more uncertain than the times. I'm obliged to you for the sleep last night, and the cover for Mowitza. If I can ever do you as good a turn, just sing out."

Hardy held out his hand impulsively. "You did a heap more for us a year ago, for which we never had a chance to make return," he said in his natural, hearty manner.

"Oh, yes, you have had," contradicted Rachel's cool tones from the porch; "you have the chance now."

Genesee darted one quick glance at her face. Something in it was evidently a compensation, and blotted out the bitterness that had crept into his last speech, for with a freer manner he took the proffered hand.

"That's all right," he said easily. "I was right glad of the trip myself, so it wasn't any work; but at the present speaking the days are not picnic days, and I must 'git.' Good-bye, Mrs. Hardy, good-bye; boys."

Then he turned in his saddle and looked at Rachel. "Klahowya—tillikum," he said, lifting his hat in a final farewell to all.

But in the glance toward her she felt he had said "thank you" as plainly as he had in the Indian language called her "friend."

"Oh, dear!" said Tillie, turning into the house as he rode away. "I wish the man had staid away, or else that we had known more about him when we first met him. It is very awkward to change one's manner to him, and—and yet it seems the only thing to do."

"Certainly," agreed Rachel, with an altogether unnecessary degree of contempt, "it is the only thing for you to do."

Tillie sat down miserably under this stroke, the emphasis denoting very plainly the temper of the speaker.

"Oh, don't be ugly, Rache," she begged. "I really feel wretched about it. I thought at first all the freedom of social laws out here was so nice but it isn't. It has a terrible side to it, when the greatest scamp is of as much account as the finest gentleman, and expects to be received on the same footing. He—he had no right to come imposing on us at the first;" and with this addition to her defense, Tillie tried to ensconce herself behind the barricade of injured faith, but feeling that her protests were only weakening her argument.

"To the best of my recollection," said the girl, with a good deal of the supercilious in her manner, "he neither came near us nor advanced any desire for friendship on his own account. We hunted him up, and insisted on talking natural history and singing songs with him, and pressing on him many invitations to visit us, invitations which he avoided accepting. He was treated, not as an equal of the other gentlemen, but as a superior; and I believe it is the only time we ever did him justice."

"Yes, he did seem very nice in those days; but you see it was all false pretense. Think of the life that he had come from, and that he went back to! It's no use talking, Rachel—there is only a right way and a wrong way in this world. He has shown his choice, and self-respecting people can only keep rid of him as much as possible. I don't like to hurt his feelings, but it makes it very awkward for us that we have accepted any favors from him."

"The obligation rests rather lightly on your shoulders to cause you much fretting," said the girl bitterly; "and he thought so much of you, too—so much."

Her voice, that began so calmly, ended a little uncertainly, and she walked out of the door.

Hardy, coming in a moment later, found Tillie divided between penitence and pettishness, and fighting her way to comfort through tears.

"I know I'm right, Hen, about the whole question," she whimpered, when safely perched on the stronghold of his knee, "and that is what makes it so aggravating."

"To know you're right?"

"No; but to have Rachel, who knows she is in the wrong, take that high-handed way about the affair, and end up by making me feel ashamed. Yes, she did, Hen—just that. I felt so ashamed I cried, and yet I knew I was right all the time—now what are you laughing at?"

NEIGHBORS OF THE NORTH PARK.

Reveille! Boots and saddles! Taps!

About the Hardy ranch the changes were rung on all those notes of camp, from early morn till dewy eve, by the melodious imitations of Jim.

Stories of grizzlies and black bear had grown passé; even the more rare accounts of wild horses spotted in some secluded valley failed to stir his old-time interest. All else had drifted into nothingness to him, for the "yaller" had come.

It had been stationed in the North Park for ten days—days of wild commotion at the ranch, for North Park was only two miles away, following the little branch of Missoula Creek that flowed north to the Kootenai River. The necessary errands to and fro between the two points of residence were multitudinous, for Jim could never remember but one thing at a time of late; and the retraced steps he took would have tired out anyone less curious. He was disappointed, at first, to find that only one company had been sent up to guard the gate into the Kootenai country. It did not look as if they feared any outbreak or active service, and if it had not been in the most miserable of seasons, they would have had much the appearance of a pleasure party; but the rains were in the valleys and the snows were on the hills, and camp life under those circumstances is a breeder of rayless monotony.

"And your ranch up here has proved the oasis in our desert," declared Fred Dreyer in a burst of gratitude to Rachel, just as if the locating of the sheep farm in that particular part of the world was due to the sagacity and far-sightedness of Miss Hardy; "and when Mr. Stuart told us at the Fort that we should have so charming a neighbor, I wanted to throw up my plate and give three cheers. We were at mess—at dinner, I mean. But I restrained my enthusiasm, because my leave to come along was only provisional at that time, and depended on my good behavior; but once here, my first impulse was to give you a big hug instead of the conventional hand-shake, for there are no girls at the Fort, and I was hungry for the sight of one."

It was not, as one may suppose, one of the uniformed warriors of the camp who expressed himself with this enthusiasm, though several looked as if they would like to, but it was the most petite little creature in petticoats—to her own disgust; and to mitigate the femininity of them as much as possible, they were of regular army blue, their only trimming belt and bands of the "yaller," an adornment Jim openly envied her, and considered senseless when wasted on a girl. She was Miss Frederick Dreyer, the daughter of Major Dreyer, of the Fort, and the sweetheart of most of the men in it, from the veterans down.

"They all think they own me," she confided plaintively to Rachel, "just because I'm little. It's only a year and a half since they quit calling me 'Baby Fred'—think of that! When you're owned by a whole regiment, it's so hard to gather up any dignity, or keep it if you do get hold of it; don't you think so?"

"I have had no experience in that line," answered Rachel. "You see I have never been owned by a regiment, nor by anybody else."

"How delightfully independent you are!" and Miss Fred, encircled by comrades, seemed really to envy the other her loneness in the world. "No orderly forever on duty at your heels, and—"

"And no lieutenant," put in Rachel; and then they both laughed, and the younger told the elder she was ridiculous, for the lieutenants were not a bit worse than the rest.

"Worse? Not at all. I could even imagine circumstances under which they might be preferable, and I'm not gifted with much imagination, either."

"I know someone who thinks you are, and an enviable imagination at that," laughed Miss Fred.

Rachel opened her eyes a little in questioning, but did not speak.

"Why, it was Mr. Stuart. He talked about you a good deal at the Fort. You know there are several officers who have their wives with them, and he was asking them lots of questions about typical Western girls, but they didn't seem to know any, for at a military fort girls don't remain girls long—unless they're half boys, like me. Someone always snaps them up and tacks 'Mrs.' to their name, and that settles them."

"Poor girls!"

"Oh, bless you! they would say that same thing of anyone who visited a fort and did not become married, or engaged—well, I should think so!"

"Do you come in for your share of commiseration?" asked Tillie, who was listening with interest to this gossip of military life that seemed strange for a woman to share.

"Me? Not a bit of it. I am not worth their notice in that respect. They haven't begun to treat me as if I was grown up, yet; that's the disadvantage of being little—you never can impress people with a belief in your own importance. Yesterday, Lieutenant Murray had the impudence to tell me that, when all was said and done, I was only a 'camp follower' hanging onto the coat-tails of the army, and likely to be mustered out of the regiment at the discretion of the superior officers—my lords and masters! What do you think of that?"

"That you must have made things rather warm for the poor Lieutenant to provoke a speech so unnatural to his usual courtesy," answered Rachel. "Whatever Mr. Stuart may credit me with, I have not imagination enough to conceive that speech being unprovoked."

"Well, if you're going to champion his High-Mightiness, I'll tell you nothing more. Mr. Stuart said you were so sympathetic, too."

"I should say it was the Stuart who was imaginative," laughed Rachel; "ask Tillie."

"But, he did say that—seriously," insisted Miss Fred, turning to Tillie. "When Mrs. Captain Sneath was curious about you, he said you had a delicate imagination that would find beauty in things that to many natures would be commonplace, and topped off a long list of virtues by saying you were the most loyal of friends."

Tillie sat looking at Rachel in astonishment.

"What have you been doing with the man?" she asked; "giving him some potion brewed by an Indian witch? A sure 'hoodoo' it must be, to warp a man's judgment like that! And you were not so very nice to him, either."

"Wasn't she?" asked Fred in amazement. "Well I think it would be hard to be anything else to so charming and so clever a man. Do you know he is very rich?"

"No," answered Tillie. "We only knew that he was a physician out here for a change of air. He is splendid company."

"Well, I should think so! We were all in love with him at the Fort. Mrs. Sneath says he has given up medicine, and—I believe it's something of a secret, but it doesn't matter in this far-out corner of the world—he is something of a writer—a writer of fiction. The way I heard it was through the Captain, who used to know him at college. He says that the Stuart, as you call him, is most likely out here studying up material for some work—a novel, may be. Wouldn't you love to read it?"

"I can't say unless I have some idea of the class of work. What has he done?"

It was Rachel who was the questioner, and who, in the light of a reasonable cause for his presence in the Kootenai, felt herself all in a moment a bit of a fool for some of her old fancies.

"I don't know—wish I did," said Miss Fred promptly. "He writes under an assumed name. Mrs. Sneath wouldn't tell me, for fear I'd bother him about it, I suppose; but if he comes up here to camp, I'll find out before he leaves—see if I don't."

"He is not likely to pay a visit up here in this season of the year," remarked Rachel. "I thought he was going East from Owens."

"He did talk like that when he first went down there, and that's what made Captain Sneath decide he was studying up the country; for all at once he said he might stay out West all winter, and seemed to take quite an interest in the Indian question—made friends with all the scouts down there, and talked probabilities with even the few 'good' Indians about the place. He told me he might see me again, if I was coming up with the company. So he is studying up something out here—sure."

Nobody answering this speculation, she was silent a bit, looking at Rachel, who had picked up a book off the table; and then she began to laugh.

"Well—" and Rachel glanced over at her, noting that she looked both amused and hesitating—"well, what is it?"

"I was only thinking how—how funny it would be if you happened to be that 'something.'"

But Rachel's answering laugh, as she pushed the book away, signified that it was the least probable of all fancies.

"It is you who should write romances, instead of the Stuart," she replied—"you and Tillie here. She has a good deal of the same material in her—that of a match-maker. She has spied out life-partners for me in all sorts of characters out here, from Davy MacDougall down to Jim. They are wonderfully anxious to get rid of me."