"Oh, 'Tana, it is awful--awful!" and poor Mrs. Huzzard rocked herself in a spasm of woe. "And to think that you won't say a word--not a single word! It just breaks my heart."
"Now, now! I'll say lots of things if you will talk of something besides murders. And I'll mend your broken heart when this trouble is all over, you will see!"
"Over! I'm mightily afraid it is only commencing. And you that cool and indifferent you are enough to put one crazy! Oh, if Dan Overton was only here."
The girl smiled. All the hours of the night had gone by. He had at least twelve hours' start, and the men of the camp had not yet suspected him for even a moment. They had questioned Harris, and he told them, by signs, that no man had gone through his cabin, no one had been in since dark; but he had heard a movement in the other room. The knife he had seen 'Tana take into the other room long before dark.
"And some one quarreling with this Holly--or following him--may have chanced on it and used it," contested Lyster, who was angered, dismayed, and puzzled at 'Tana, quite as much as at the finding of the body. Her answers to all questions were so persistently detrimental to her own cause.
"Don't be uneasy--they won't hang me," she assured him. "Think of them hanging any one for killing Lee Holly! The man who did it--if he knows whom he was settling for--was a fool not to face the camp and get credit for it. Every man would have shaken hands with him. But just because there is a little mystery about it, they try to make it out a crime. Pooh!"
"Oh, child!" exclaimed Mrs. Huzzard, totally scandalized. "A murder! Of course it is a crime--the greatest."
"I don't think so. It is a greater crime to bring a soul into the world and then neglect it--let it drift into any hell on earth that nets it--than it is to send a soul out of the world, to meet heaven, if it deserves it. There are times when murder is justifiable, but there are certain other crimes that nothing could ever justify."
"Why, 'Tana!" and Mrs. Huzzard looked at her helplessly. But Miss Slocum gave the girl a more understanding regard.
"You speak very bitterly for a young girl; as if you had thought a great deal on this question."
"I have," she acknowledged, promptly; "you think it is not a very nice question for girls to study about, don't you? Well, it isn't nice, but it's true. I happen to be one of the souls dragged into life by people who didn't think they had responsibilities. Miss Slocum, maybe that is why I am extra bitter on the subject."
"But not--not against your parents, 'Tana?" said Mrs. Huzzard, in dismay.
The girl's mouth drew hard and unlovely at the question.
"I don't know much about religion," she said, after a little, "and I don't know that it matters much--now don't faint, Mrs. Huzzard! but I'm pretty certain old married men who had families were the ones who laid down the law about children in the Bible. They say 'spare the rod and spoil the child,' and then say 'honor your father and mother.' They seem to think it a settled thing that all fathers and mothers are honorable--but they ain't; and that all children need beating--and they don't."
"Oh, 'Tana!"
"And I think it is that one-sided commandment that makes folks think that all the duty must go from children to the parents, and not a word is said of the duty people owe to the souls they bring into the world. I don't think it's a square deal."
"A square deal! Why, 'Tana!"
"Isn't it so?" she asked, moodily. "You think a girl is a pretty hard case if she doesn't give proper respect and duty to her parents, don't you? But suppose they are the sort of people no one can respect--what then? Seems to me the first duty is from the parent to the children--the duty of caring for them, loving them, and teaching them right. A child can't owe a debt of duty when it never received the duties it should have first. Oh, I may not say this clearly as I feel it."
"But you know, 'Tana," said Miss Slocum, "that if there is no commandment as to parents giving care to their children, it is only because it is so plainly a natural thing to do that it was unnecessary to command it."
"No more natural than for a child to honor any person who is honorable, or to love the parent who loves him, and teaches him rightly. Huh! If a child is not able to love and respect a parent, it is the child who loses the most."
Miss Slocum looked at her sadly.
"I can't scold you as I would try to scold many a one in your place," she said, "for I feel as if you must have traveled over some long, hard path of troubles, before you could reach this feeling you have. But, 'Tana, think of brighter things; young girls should never drift into those perplexing questions. They will make you melancholy if you brood on such things."
"Melancholy? Well, I think not," and she smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "Seems to me I'm the least gloomy person in camp this morning. All the rest of you look as though Mr. Holly had been your bosom friend."
She talked recklessly--they thought heartlessly--of the murder, and the two women were strongly inclined to think the shock of the affair had touched her brain, for she showed no concern whatever as to her own position, but treated it as a joke. And when she realized that she was to a certain extent under guard, she seemed to find amusement in that, too. Her expressions, when the cousins grew pitiful over the handsome face of Holly, were touched with ridicule.
"I wonder if there was ever a man too low and vile to get woman's pity, if he only had a pretty face," she said, caustically. "If he was an ugly, old, half-decent fellow, you wouldn't be making any soft-hearted surmises as to what he might have been under different circumstances. He has spoiled the lives of several tenderhearted women like you--yet you pity him!"
"'Tana, I never knew you to be so set against any one as you are against that poor dead man," declared Mrs. Huzzard. "Not so much wonder the folks think you know how it happened, for you always had a helping word for the worst old tramp or beggarly Indian that came around; but for this man you have nothing but unkindness."
"No," agreed the girl, "and you would like to think him a romantic victim of somebody, just because he is so good-looking. I'm going to talk to Harris. He won't sympathize with the wrong side, I am sure."
He looked up eagerly as she entered, his eyes full of anxious question. She touched his hand kindly and sat close beside him as she talked.
"You want to know all about it, don't you?" she asked, softly. "Well, it is all over. He was alive, after all, and I would not believe it. But now you need never trail him again, you can rest now, for he is dead. Somebody else has--has owed him a grudge, too. They think I am the somebody, but you don't believe that?"
He shook his head decidedly.
"No," she continued; "though for one moment, Joe, I thought that it might have been you. Yes, I did; for of course I knew it was only weakness would keep you from it, if you were in reach of him. But I remembered at once that it could not be, for the hand that struck him was strong."
He assented in his silent way, and watched her face closely, as if to read the shadows of thought thrown on it by her feelings.
"It's awful, ain't it?" she whispered. "It is what I said I hoped for, and just yet I can't be sorry--I can't! But, after this stir is all over, I know it will trouble me, make me sorry because I am not sorry now. I can't cry, but I do feel like screaming. And see! every once in a while my hands tremble; I tremble all over. Oh, it is awful!"
She buried her face in her hands. Only to him did she show any of the feeling with which the death of the man touched her.
"And you can't tell me anything of how it was done?" she said, at last. "You so near--did you see any one?"
She longed to ask if he had seen Overton, but dared not utter his name, lest he might suspect as she did. Each hour that went by was an added gain to her for him. Of course he had struck, not knowing who the man was. If he had known, it would have been so easy to say, "I found him robbing the cabin. I killed him," and there would have been no further question concerning it.
"But if all the other bars were beaten down between us, this one would keep me from ever shaking hands with him again. Why should it have been he out of all the camp? Oh, it makes my heart ache!"
While she sat thus, with miserable thoughts, others came to the door, and looking up, she saw Akkomi, who looked on her with keen, accusing eyes.
"No--it is not true, Akkomi," she said, in his own jargon. "Keep silent for a little while of the things these people do not know--a little while, and then I can tell you who it is I am shielding, but not yet."
"Him!" and the eyes of the Indian turned to the paralytic.
"No--not him; truly not," she said, earnestly. "It is some one you would want to help if you knew--some one who is going fast on the path from these people. They will learn soon it is not I; but till then, keep silence."
"Dan--where?" he asked, laconically, and her face paled at the question.
Had he any reason to suspect the dread in her own mind? But a moment's thought reassured her. He had asked simply because Overton seemed always to him the controlling spirit of the camp, and Overton was the one he would have speech with, if any.
"Overton left last night for the lake," explained Lyster, who had entered and heard the name of Dan and the interrogative tone. Then the blanket was brought to Akkomi--his blanket, in which the man had died.
"I sold it to the white man--that is all," he answered through 'Tana; and more than that he would not say except to inform them he would wait for Dan. Which was, in fact, the general desire of the committee organized to investigate.
They all appeared to be waiting for Dan. Lyster did not by any means fill his place, simply because Lyster's interest in 'Tana was too apparent, and there was little of the cool quality of reason in his attitude toward the mysterious case. He did not believe the ring she wore had belonged to Holly, though she refused to tell the source from which it had reached her. He did not believe the man who said he heard that war of words at her cabin in the evening--at least, when others were about, he acted as if he did not believe it. But when he and 'Tana chanced to be alone, she felt the doubt there must be in his mind, and a regret for him touched her. For his sake she was sorry, but not sorry enough to clear the mystery at the expense of that other man she thought she was shielding.
Captain Leek had been dispatched with all speed to the lake works, that Seldon, Haydon, and Overton might be informed of the trouble in camp, and hasten back to settle it. To send for them was the only thing Lyster thought of doing, for he himself felt powerless against the lot of men, who were not harsh or rude in any way, but who simply wanted to know "why"--so many "whys" that he could not answer.
Not less trying to him were the several who persisted in asserting that she had done a commendable thing--that the country ought to feel grateful to her, for the man had made trouble along the Columbia for years. He and his confederates had done ugly work along the border, etc., etc.
"Sorry you asked me, Max?" she said, seeing his face grow gloomy under their cheering (?) assertions.
He did not answer at once, afraid his impatience with her might make itself apparent in his speech.
"No, I'm not sorry," he said, at last; "but I shall be relieved when the others arrive from the lake. Since you utterly refuse to confide even in me, you render me useless as to serving you; and--well--I can't feel flattered that you confide in me no more than in the strangers here."
"I know," she agreed, with a little sigh, "it is hard on you, and it will be harder still if the story of this should ever creep out of the wilderness to the country where you come from--wouldn't it?" and she looked at him very sharply, noting the swift color flush his face, as though she had read his thoughts. "Yes--so it's lucky, Max, that we haven't talked to others about that little conditional promise, isn't it? So it will be easier to forget, and no one need know."
"You mean you think me the sort of fellow to break our engagement just because these fools have mixed you up with this horror?" he asked, angrily. "You've no right to think that of me; neither have you the right--in justice to me as well as yourself--to maintain this very suggestive manner about all things connected with the murder. Why can you not tell more clearly where your time was spent last evening? Why will you not tell where the ring came from? Why will you see me half-frantic over the whole miserable affair, when you could, I am sure, easily change it?"
"Oh, Max, I don't want to worry you--indeed I don't! But--" and she smiled mirthlessly. "I told you once I was a 'hoodoo.' The people who like me are always sure to have trouble brewing for them. That is why I say you had better give me up, Max; for this is only the beginning."
"Don't talk like that; it is folly," he said, in a sharp tone. "'Hoodoo!' Nonsense! When Overton and the others arrive, they will find a means of changing the ideas of these people, in spite of your reticence; and then maybe old Akkomi may find words, too. He sits outside the door as impassive as the clay image you gave me and bewitched me with."
She smiled faintly, thinking of those days--how very long ago they seemed, yet it was this same summer.
"I feel as if I had lived a long time since I played with that clay," she said, wistfully; "so many things have been made different for me."
Then she arose and walked about the little room restlessly, while the eyes of Harris never left her. Into the other room she had not gone at all, for in it was the dead stranger.
"When do you look for your uncle and Mr. Haydon?" she asked, at last, for the silences were hardest to endure.
She would laugh, or argue, or ridicule--do anything rather than sit silent with questioning eyes upon her. She even grew to fancy that Harris must accuse her--he watched her so!
"When do we look for them? Well, I don't dare let myself decide. I only hope they may have made a start back, and will meet the captain on his way. As to Dan--he had not so very much the start, and they ought to catch up with him, for there were the two Indian canoeists--the two best ones; and when they are racing over the water, with an object, they surely ought to make better time than he. I can't see that he had any very pressing reason for going at all."
"He doesn't talk much about his reasons," she answered.
"No; that's a fact," he agreed, "and less of late than when I knew him first. But he'll make Akkomi talk, maybe, when he arrives--and I hope you, too."
"When he arrives!"
She thought the words, but did not say them aloud. She sat long after Max had left her, and thought how many hours must elapse before they discovered that Dan had not followed the other men to the lake works. She felt sure that he was somewhere in the wilderness, avoiding the known paths, alone, and perhaps hating her as the cause of his isolation, because she would not confess what the man was to her, but left him blindly to keep his threat, and kill him when found in her room.
Ah! why not have trusted him with the whole truth? She asked herself the question as she sat there, but the mere thought of it made her face grow hot, and her jaws set defiantly.
She would not--she could not! so she told herself. Better--better far be suspected of a murder--live all her life under the blame of it for him--than to tell him of a past that was dead to her now, a past she hated, and from which she had determined to bar herself as far as silence could build the wall. And to tell him--him--she could not.
But even as she sat, with her burning face in her hands, quick, heavy steps came to the door, halted, and looking up she found Dan before her.
"Oh! you should not," she whispered, hurriedly. "Why did you come back? They do not suspect; they think I did it--and so--"
"What does this all mean?--what do you mean?" he asked. "Can't you speak?"
It seemed she could not find any more words, she stared at him so helplessly.
"Max, come here!" he called, to hasten steps already approaching. "Come, all of you; I had only a moment to listen to the captain when he caught up with me. But he told me she is suspected of murder--that a ring she wore last night helped the suspicion on. I didn't wait to hear any more, for I gave the little girl that snake ring--gave it to her weeks ago. I bought it from a miner, and he told me he got it from an Indian near Karlo. Now are you ready to suspect me, too, because I had it first?"
"The ring wasn't just the most important bit of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Overton," answered the man named Saunders; "and we are all mighty glad you've got here. It was in her room the man was found, and a knife she borrowed from you was what killed him; and of where she was just about the time the thing happened she won't say anything."
His face paled slightly as he looked at her and heard the brief summing up of the case.
"My knife?" he said, blankly.
"Yes, sir. When some one said it was your knife, she spoke up and said it was, but that you had not had it since noon, for she borrowed it then to cut a stick; but beyond that she don't tell a thing."
"Who is the man?"
"The renegade--Lee Holly."
"Lee Holly!" He turned a piercing glance on Harris, remembering the deep interest he had shown in that man Lee Holly and his partner, "Monte."
Harris met his gaze without flinching, and nodded his head as if in assent.
And that was the man found dead in her room!
The faces of the people seemed for a moment an indistinct blur before his eyes; then he rallied and turned to her.
"'Tana, you never did it," he said, reassuringly; "or if you did, it has been justifiable, and I know it. If it was necessary to do it in any self-defense, don't be afraid to tell it all plainly. No one would blame you. It is only this mystery that makes them want to hear the truth."
She only looked at him. Was he acting? Did he himself know nothing? The hope that it was so--that she had deceived herself--made her tremble as she had not at danger to herself. She had risen to her feet as he entered, but she swayed as if to fall, and he caught her, not knowing it was hope instead of despair that took the color from her face and left her helpless.
"Courage, 'Tana! Tell us what you can. I left you just as the moon came up. I saw you go to Mrs. Huzzard's tent. Now, where did you go after that?"
"What?" almost shouted Lyster. "You were with her when the moon rose. Are you sure?"
"Sure? Of course I am. Why?"
"And how long before that, Mr. Overton?" asked Saunders; "for that is a very important point."
"About a half-hour, I should say--maybe a little more," he answered, staring at them. "Now, what important thing does that prove?"
One of the men gave a cheer; three or four had come up to the door when they saw Overton, and they took the yell up with a will. Mrs. Huzzard started to run from the tent, but grew so nervous that she had to wait until Miss Slocum came to her aid.
"What in the world does it mean?" she gasped.
Saunders turned around with an honestly pleased look.
"It means that Mr. Overton here has brought word that clears Miss Rivers of being at the cabin when the murder was done--that's what it means; and we are all too glad over it to keep quiet. But why in the world didn't you tell us that, miss?"
But she did not say a word. All about Dan were exclamations and disjointed sentences, from which he could gain little actual knowledge, and he turned to Lyster, impatiently:
"Can't you tell me--can't some of you tell me, what I have cleared up for her? When was this killing supposed to be done?"
"At or a little before moonrise," said Max, his face radiant once more. "'Tana--don't you know what he has done for you? taken away all of that horribly mistaken suspicion you let rest on you. Where was she, Dan?"
"Last night? Oh, up above the bluff there--went up when the pretty red lights were in the sky, and staid until the moon rose. I came across her up there, and advised her not to range away alone; so, when she got good and ready, she walked back again, and went to the tent where you folks were. Then I struck the creek, decided I would take a run up the lake, and left without seeing any of you again. And all this time 'Tana has had a guard over her. Some of you must have been crazy."
"Well, then, I guess I was the worst lunatic of the lot," confessed Saunders. "But to tell the truth, Mr. Overton, it looks to me now as if she encouraged suspicion--yes, it does. 'Overton's knife,' said some one; but, quick as could be, she spoke up and said it was she who had it, and she didn't mind just where she left it. And as to where she was at that time, well, she just wouldn't give us a bit of satisfaction. Blest if I don't think she wanted us to suspect her."
"Oh!" he breathed, as if in understanding, and her first words swept back to him, her nervous--"Why did you come back? They suspect me!" Surely that cry was as a plea for his own safety; it spoke through eyes and voice as well as words. Some glimmer of the truth came to him.
"Come, 'Tana!" he said, and reached his hand to her. "Where is the man--Holly? I should like to go in. Will you come, too?"
She rose without a word, and no one attempted to follow them.
Mrs. Huzzard heaved a prodigious sigh of content.
"Oh, that girl Montana!" she exclaimed. "I declare she ain't like any girl I ever did see! This morning, when she was a suspected criminal, she was talky, and even laughed, and now that she's cleared, she won't lift her head to look at any one. I do wonder if that sort of queerness is catching in these woods. I declare I feel most scared enough to leave."
But Lyster reassured her.
"Remember how sick she has been; and think what a shock this whole affair has been to weak nerves," he said, for with Dan's revelations he had grown blissfully content once more, "and as for that fellow hearing voices in her cabin--nonsense! She had been reading some poem or play aloud. She is fond of reading so, and does it remarkably well. He heard her spouting in there for the benefit of Harris, and imagined she was making threats to some one. Poor little girl! I'm determined she sha'n't remain here any longer."
"Are you?" asked Mrs. Huzzard, dryly. "Well, Mr. Max, so long as I've known her, I've always found 'Tana makes her own determinations--and sticks to them, too."
"I'm glad to be reminded of that," he retorted, "for she promised me yesterday to marry me some time."
"Bless my soul!"
"If she didn't change her mind," he added, laughingly.
"To marry you! Well, well, well!" and she stared at him so queerly, that a shade of irritation crossed his face.
"Why not?" he asked. "Don't you think that a plain, ordinary man is good enough for your wild-flower of the Kootenai hills?"
"Oh, you're not plain at all, Mr. Max Lyster," she returned, "and I'll go bail many a woman who is smarter than either 'Tana or me has let you know it! It ain't the plainness--it's the difference. And--well, well! you know you've been quarreling ever since you met."
"But that is all over now," he promised; "and haven't you a good wish for us?"
"Indeed I have, then--a many of them, but you have surprised me. I used to think that's how it would end; and then--well, then, a different notion got in my head. Now that it's settled, I do hope you will be happy. Bless the child! I'll go and tell her so this minute."
"No," he said, quickly, "let her and Dan have their talk out--if she will talk to him. That fever left her queer in some things, and one of them is her avoidance of Dan. She hasn't been free and friendly with him as she used to be, and it is too bad; for he is such a good fellow, and would do anything for her."
"Yes, he would," assented Mrs. Huzzard.
"And she will be her own spirited self in a few weeks--when she gets away from here--and gets stronger. She'll appreciate Dan more after a while, for there are few like him. And so--as she is to go away so soon, I hope something will put them on their former confidential footing. Maybe this murder will be the something."
"You are a good friend, Mr. Max," said the woman, slowly, "and you deserve to be a lucky lover. I'm sure I hope so."
Within the cabin, those two of whom they spoke stood together beside the dead outlaw, and their words were low--so low that the paralyzed man in the next room listened in vain.
"And you believed that of me--of me?" he asked, and she answered, falteringly:
"How did I know? You said--you threatened--you would kill him--any man you found in here. So, when he was here dead, I--did not know."
"And you thought I had stuck that knife in him and left?"
She nodded her head.
"And you thought," he continued, in a voice slightly tremulous, "that you were giving me a chance to escape just so long as you let them suspect--you?"
She did not answer, but turned toward the door. He held his arm out and barred her way.
"Only a moment!" he said, pleadingly. "It never can be that--that I would be anything to you, little girl--never, never! But--just once--let me tell you a truth that shall never hurt you, I swear! I love you! No other word but that will tell your dearness to me. I--I never would have said it, but--but what you risked for me has broken me down. It has told me more than your words would tell me, and I--Oh, God! my God!"
She shrank from the passion in his words and tone, but the movement only made him catch her arm and hold her there. Tears were in his eyes as he looked at her, and his jaws were set firmly.
"You are afraid of me--of me?" he asked. "Don't be. Life will be hard enough now without leaving me that to remember. I'm not asking a word in return from you; I have no right. You will be happy somewhere else--and with some one else--and that is right."
He still held her wrist, and they stood in silence. She could utter no word; but her mouth trembled and she tried to smother a sob that arose in her throat.
But he heard it.
"Don't!" he said, almost in a whisper--"for God's sake, don't cry. I can't stand that--not your tears. Here! be brave! Look up at me, won't you? See! I don't ask you for a word or a kiss or a thought when you leave me--only let me see your eyes! Look at me!"
What he read in her trembling lips and her shrinking, shamed eyes made him draw his breath hard through his shut teeth.
"My brave little girl!" he said softly. "You will think harshly of me for this some day--if you ever know--know all. But what you did this morning made a coward of me--that and my longing for you. Try to forgive me. Or, no--you had better not. And when you are his wife--Oh, it's no use--I can't think or speak of that--yet. Good-by, little girl--good-by!"
