CHAPTER X.
THE TELLING OF A STORY.
"But you promised! Yes, you did, Mr. Stuart--didn't he, Mrs. Hardy?There, that settles it; so you see this is your evening to tell astory."
The protracted twilight, with its cool grays and purples, had finallyfaded away over the snow, long after the stars took up their watch forthe night. The air was so still and so chill that the bugle-call atsunset had sounded clearly along the little valley from camp, and Fredthought the nearness of sound made a house seem so much more home-like.After the bugle notes and the long northern twilight, had come thegrouping of the young folks about the fire, and Fred's reminder thatthis was to be a "story" night.
"But," declared Stuart, "I can think of none, except a very wonderfulone of an old lady who lived in a shoe, and another of a housemarvelously constructed by a gentleman called Jack--"
Here a clamor arose from the rebels in the audience, and from Fred theproposal that he should read or tell them of what he was working on atpresent, and gaining at last his consent.
"But I must bring down some notes in manuscript," he added, "as part ofit is only mapped out, and my memory is treacherous."
"I will go and get them," offered Fred. "No, don't you go! I'm afraid tolet you out of the room, lest you may remember some late business atcamp and take French leave. Is the manuscript on the table in your room?I'll bring it."
And scarcely waiting either assent or remonstrance, she ran up thestairs, returning immediately with hands full of loose sheets and tworolls of manuscript.
"I confiscated all there was in reach," she laughed. "Here they are; youpay no money, and you take your choice."
She was such a petite, pretty little creature, her witchy face alightwith the confidence of pleasure to come; and looking down at her, heremarked:
"You look so much a spirit of inspiration, Miss Fred, that you hadbetter not make such a sweeping offer, lest I might be tempted to chooseyou."
"And have a civil war on your hands," warned Rachel, "with the wholecamp in rebellion."
"Not much; they don't value me so highly," confessed Fred. "They wouldall be willing to give me away."
"A willingness only seconded by your own." This from the gallantLieutenant on the settee. "My child, this is not leap-year, and in theabsence of your parent I--"
"Yes, I know. But as Captain Holt commands in papa's absence, I don'tsee what extra responsibility rests on your shoulders. Now, Mr. Stuart,all quiet along the Kootenai; go ahead."
"Not an easy thing to do," he answered ruefully, trying to sort thejumbled lot of papers she had brought him, and beginning by laying therolls of manuscript on the table back of him, as if disposing of them."You have seized on several things that we could not possibly wadethrough in one evening, but here is the sketch I spoke of. It is ofcamp-life, by the way, and so open to criticism from you two veterans.It was suggested by a story I heard told at the Fort."
Just then a wild screech of terror sounded from the yard, and then anequally wild scramble across the porch. Everyone jumped to their feet,but Rachel reached the door first, just as Aunty Luce, almost gray fromterror, floundered in.
"They's come!" she panted, in a sort of paralysis of fright and triumphof prophecy. "I done tole all you chillen! Injuns! right here--I seed'em!"
Hardy reached for his gun, the others doing the same; but the girl atthe door had darted out into the darkness.
"Rachel!" screamed Tillie, but no Rachel answered. Even Hardy's call wasnot heeded; and he followed her with something like an oath on his lips,and Stuart at his elbow.
Outside, it seemed very dark after the brightness within, and theystopped on the porch an instant to guide themselves by sound, if therewas any movement.
There was--the least ominous of sounds--a laugh. The warlike attitude ofall relaxed somewhat, for it was so high and clear that it reached eventhose within doors; and then, outlined against the background of snow,Stuart and Hardy could see two forms near the gate--a tall and a shortone, and the shorter one was holding to the sleeve of the other andlaughing.
"You and Aunty Luce are a fine pair of soldiers," she was saying; "bothbeat a retreat at the first glimpse of each other. And you can't leaveafter upsetting everyone like this; you must come in the house andreassure them. Come on!"
Some remonstrance was heard, and at the sound of the voice Hardy steppedout.
"Hello, Genesee!" he said, with a good deal of relief in his manner;"were you the scarecrow? Come in to the light, till we make sure we'renot to be scalped."
After a few words with the girl that the others could not hear, hewalked beside her to the porch.
"I'm mighty sorry, Hardy," he said as they met. "I was a little shakyabout Mowitza to-day, and reckoned I'd better make an extra trip over;but I didn't count on kicking up a racket like this--didn't even spotthe woman till she screeched and run."
"That's all right," said Hardy reassuringly. "I'm glad you came, whetherintentionally or by accident. You know I told you the other day--"
"Yes--I know."
Rachel and Stuart had entered the house ahead of them, and all haddropped back into their chosen points of vantage for the evening whenassurance was given that the Indians belonged to Aunty's imagination;but for those short seconds of indecision Tillie had realized, as neverbefore, that they were really within the lines of the Indian country.
Aunty Luce settled herself sulkily in the corner, a grotesque figure,with an injured air, eyeing Genesee with a suspicion not a whit allayedwhen she recognized the man who had brought the first customs of war tothem--taking nocturnal possession of the best room.
"No need tell me he's a friend o' you all!" she grunted. "Nice sort o'friend you's comin' to, I say--lives with Injuns; reckon I heard--umph!"
This was an aside to Tillie, who was trying to keep her quiet, and notsucceeding very well, much to the amusement of the others withinhearing, especially Fred.
Genesee had stopped in the outer room, speaking with Hardy; and,standing together on the hearth, in the light of the fire, it occurredto the group in the other room what a fine pair they made--each a pieceof physical perfection in his way.
"A pair of typical frontiersmen," said Murray, and Miss Fred was pleasedto agree, and add some praise on her own account.
"Why, that man Genesee is really handsome," she whispered; "he isn'tscowling like sin, as he was when I saw him before. Ask him in here,Mrs. Tillie; I like to look at him."
Mrs. Tillie had already made a movement toward him. Perhaps the steady,questioning gaze of Rachel had impelled her to follow what was reallyher desire, only--why need the man be so flagrantly improper? Tillie hada great deal of charity for black sheep, but she believed in theirhaving a corral to themselves, and not allowing them the chance ofsmutching the spotless flocks that have had good luck and escaped themire. She was a good little woman, a warm-hearted one; and despite hercool condemnation of his wickedness when he was absent, she always foundherself, in his presence, forgetting all but their comradeship of thatautumn, and greeting him with the cordiality that belonged to it.
"I shall pinch myself for this in the morning," she prophesied, evenwhile she held out her hand and reminded him that he had been a longtime deciding about making them a visit.
Her greeting was much warmer than her farewell had been the morning heleft--possibly because of the relief in finding it was not a "hostile"at their gate. And he seemed more at ease, less as if he need to puthimself on the defensive--an attitude that had grown habitual to him, asit does to many who live against the rulings of the world.
She walked ahead of him into the other room, thus giving him no chanceto object had he wanted to; and after a moment's hesitation he followedher, and noticed, without seeming to look at any of them, that Rachelstood back of Stuart's chair, and that Stuart was looking at himintently, as if for recognition. On the other side, he saw theLieutenant quietly lay his hand on Miss Fred's wrist that was in shadow,just as she arose impulsively to offer her hand to t
he man whom shefound was handsome when he had the aid of a razor. A beard of severalweeks' growth had covered his face at their first meeting; now there wasonly a heavy mustache left. But she heeded that silent pressure of thewrist more than she would a spoken word, and instead of the profferedhand there was a little constrained smile of recognition, and a hopegiven that Aunty Luce had not upset his nerves with her war-cries.
He saw it all the moment he was inside the door--the refined face ofStuart, with the graciousness of manner so evidently acceptable to all,the sheets of manuscript still in his fingers, looking as he stood therelike the ruling spirit of the cheery circle; and just outside thatcircle, though inside the door, he--Genesee--stood alone, the factsharply accented by Miss Fred's significant movement; and with theremembrance of the fact came the quick, ever-ready spirit of bravado,and his head was held a trifle higher as he smiled down at her inapparent unconcern.
"If it is going to make Aunty Luce feel more comfortable to havecompany, I'm ready to own up that my hair raised the hat off my head atfirst sight of her--isn't quite settled into place yet;" and he ran hisfingers through the mass of thick, dark hair. "How's that, Aunty?"
"Umph!" she grunted, crouching closer to the wall, and watching himdistrustfully from the extreme corner of her eye.
"Have you ever been scared so badly you couldn't yell, Aunty?" he asked,with a bland disregard of the fact that she was just then in danger ofroasting herself on the hearth for the purpose of evading him. "No?That's the way you fixed me a little while back, sure enough. I wasscared too badly to run, or they never would have caught me."
The only intelligible answer heard from her was: "Go 'long, you!"
He did not "go 'long." On the contrary, he wheeled about in Tillie'schair, and settled himself as if that corner was especially attractive,and he intended spending the evening in it--a suggestion that was adecided surprise to all, even to Rachel, remembering his lateconservatism.
Stuart was the only one who realized that it was perhaps a method ofproving by practical demonstration the truth of his statement that hewas a Pariah among the class who received the more refined characterwith every welcome. It was a queer thing for a man to court slights, butonce inside the door, his total unconcern of that which had been agalling mortification to him was a pretty fair proof of Stuart's theory.He talked Indian wars to Hardy, and Indian love-songs to Hardy's wife.He coolly turned his attention to Lieutenant Murray, with whom hisacquaintance was the slightest, and from the Lieutenant to Miss Fred,who was amused and interested in what was, to her, a new phase of a"squaw man;" and her delight was none the less keen because of theineffectual attempts in any way to suppress this very irregularspecimen, whose easy familiarity was as silencing as his gruff curtnesshad been the day they met him first.
Beyond an occasional remark, his notice was in no way directed toRachel--in fact, he seemed to avoid looking at her. He was much moreinterested in the other two ladies, who by degrees dropped into acordiality on a par with that of Aunty Luce; and he promptly tookadvantage of it by inviting Miss Fred to go riding with him in themorning.
The man's impudence and really handsome face gave Fred a wicked desireto accept, and horrify the Lieutenant and Tillie; but one glance at thatlittle matron told her it would not do.
"I have an engagement to ride to-morrow," she said rather hurriedly,"else--"
"Else I should be your cavalier," he laughed. "Ah, well, there are moredays coming. I can wait."
A dead silence followed, in which Rachel caught the glance Geneseeturned on Stuart--a smile so mirthless and with so much of bitter ironyin it that it told her plainly as words that the farce they had satthrough was understood by those two men, if no others; and, puzzled andeager to break the awkward silence, she tried to end it by stepping intothe breach.
"You have totally forgotten the story you were to tell us," she said,pointing to the sheets of manuscript in Stuart's hand; "if we are tohave it to-night, why not begin?"
"Certainly; the story, by all means," echoed Fred. "We had it scared outof our heads, I guess, but our nerves are equal to it now. Are you fondof stories, Mr.--Mr. Genesee?"
"Uncommonly."
"Well, Mr. Stuart was about to read us one just as you came in: one hewrote since he came up in these wilds--at the Fort, didn't you say, Mr.Stuart? You know," she added, turning again to Genesee--"you know Mr.Stuart is a writer--a romancer."
"Yes," he answered slowly, looking at the subject of their discourse asif examining something rare and curious; "I should reckon--he--mightbe."
The contempt in the tone sent the hot blood to Stuart's face, his eyesglittering as ominously as Genesee's own would in anger. An instanttheir gaze met in challenge and retort, and then the sheets of paperwere laid deliberately aside.
"I believe, after all, I will read you something else," he said,reaching for one of the rolls of manuscript on the table; "that is, withyour permission. It is not a finished story, only the prologue. I wroteit in the South, and thought I might find material for the completion ofit up here; perhaps I may."
"Let us have that, by all means," urged Tillie.
"What do you call it?"
"I had not thought of a title, as the story was scarcely written withthe idea of publication. The theme, however, which is pretty fairlyexpressed in the quotation at the beginning, may suggest a title. I willleave that to my audience."
"And we will all put on our thinking-caps and study up a title while youtell the story, and when it is ended, see which has the best one tooffer. It will be a new sort of game with which to test ourimaginations. Go on. What is the quotation, to begin with?"
To the surprise of the listeners, he read that old command fromDeuteronomy, written of brother to brother:
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother.
"And with all lost things of thy brother's, which he hath lost and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise.
"In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down."
Stuart ceased after those lines, and looked for comment. He saw enoughin the man's face opposite him.
"Oh, go on," said Rachel. "Never mind about the suggestions in thatheading--it is full of them; give us the story."
"It is only the prologue to a story," he reminded her; and with nofurther comment began the manuscript.
Its opening was that saddest of all things to the living--adeath-bed--and that most binding of all vows--a promise given to thedying.
There was drawn the picture of a fragile, fair little lady, holding inher chilling fingers the destiny of the lives she was about to leavebehind--young lives--one a sobbing, wondering girl of ten, and two boys;the older perhaps eighteen, an uncouth, strong-faced youth, who claspedhands with another boy several years younger, but so fair that few wouldthink them brothers, and only the more youthful would ever have beencredited as the child of the little woman who looked so like a whitelily.
The other was the elder son--an Esau, however, who was favorite withneither father nor mother; with no one, in fact, who had ever known thesunny face and nature of the more youthful--an impulsive, lovingdisposition that only shone the brighter by contrast with thedarker-faced, undemonstrative one whom even his mother never understood.
And the shadow of that misunderstanding was with them even at thedeath-bed, where the Jacob sobbed out his grief in passionate protestsagainst the power that would rob him, and the Esau stood like a statueto receive her commands. Back of them was the father, smothering his owngrief and consoling his favorite, when he could, and the one witness tothe seal that was set on the three young lives.
Her words were not many--she was so weak--but she motioned to the girlbeside the bed. "I leave her to you," she said, looking at them both,but the eyes, true to the feeling back of them, wandered to the fairerface and rested there. "The old place will belong to you two ere manyyears--your father will perhaps com
e after me;" and she glanced lovinglytoward the man whom all the world but herself had found cold and hard innature. "I promised long ago--when her mother died--that she shouldalways have a home, and now I have to leave the trust to you, my sons."
"We will keep it," said the steady voice of Esau, as he sat like anautomaton watching her slowly drifting from them; while Jacob, on hisknees, with his arms about her, was murmuring tenderly, as to a child,that all should be as she wished--her trust was to be theirs always.
"And if either of you should fail or forget, the other must take thecare on his own shoulders. Promise me that too, because--"
The words died away in a whisper, but her eyes turned toward the Esau.He knew too bitterly what it meant. Though only a boy, he was a wildone--people said a bad one. His father had pronounced him the only oneof their name who was not a gentleman. He gambled and he drank; his homeseemed the stables, his companions, fast horses and their fast masters;and in the eyes of his mother he read, as never before, the effect thatlife had produced. His own mother did not dare trust the black sheep ofthe family, even though he promised at her death-bed.
A wild, half-murderous hate arose in him at the knowledge--a hateagainst his elegant, correctly mannered father, whose cold condemnationhad long ago barred him out from his mother's sympathy, until even ather death-bed he felt himself a stranger--his little mother--and he hadworshiped her as the faithful do their saints, and like them, afar off.
But even the hate for his father was driven back at the sight of thewistful face, and the look that comes to eyes but once.
"We promise--I promise that, so help me God!" he said earnestly, andthen bent forward for the first time, his voice breaking as he spoke."Mother! mother! say just once that you trust--that you believe in me!"
Her gaze was still on his face; it was growing difficult to move theeyes at will, and the very intensity of his own feelings may have heldher there. Her eyes widened ever so little, as if at some revelationborn to her by that magnetism, and then--"My boy, I trust--"
The words again died in a whisper; and raising his head with a longbreath of relief, he saw his father drop on his knees by the youngerson. Their arms were about each other and about her. A few broken,disjointed whispers; a last smile upward, beyond them, a soft, sighinglittle breath, after which there was no other, and then the voice of theboy, irrepressible in his grief, as his love, broke forth in passionatedespair, and was soothed by his father, who led him sobbing andrebellious from the bedside--both in their sorrow forgetting that thirdmember of the family who sat so stoically through it all, until thelittle girl, their joint trust, half-blind with her own tears, saw himthere so still and as pathetically alone as the chilling clay besidehim. Trying to say some comforting words, she spoke to him, but receivedno answer. She had always been rather afraid of this black sheep--he wasso morose about the house, and made no one love him except the horses;but the scene just past drew her to him for once without dread.
"Brother," she whispered, calling him by the name his mother had lefther; "dear brother, don't you sit there like that;" and a vague terrorcame to her as he made no sign. "You--you frighten me."
She slipped her hand about his neck with a child's caressing sympathy,and then a wild scream brought the people hurrying into the room.
"He is dead!" she cried, as she dropped beside him; "sitting there coldas stone, and we thought he didn't care! And he is dead--dead!"
But he was not dead--the physician soon assured them of that. It wasonly a cataleptic fit. The emotion that had melted the one brother totears had frozen the other into the closest semblance to stone that lifecan reach, and still be life.
The silence was thrilling as Stuart's voice ceased, and he stooped forthe other pages laid by his chair.
A feeling that the story on paper could never convey was brought toevery listener by the something in his voice that was not tears, butsuggested the emotion back of tears. They had always acknowledged themagnetism of the man, but felt that he was excelling himself in thisinstance. Tillie and Fred were silently crying. Rachel was staring verysteadily ahead of her, too steadily to notice that the hand laid onGenesee's revolver at the commencement of the story had graduallyrelaxed and dropped listless beside him. All the strength in his bodyseemed to creep into his eyes as he watched Stuart, trusting as much tohis eyes as his ears for the complete comprehension of the object in orback of that story. In the short pause the author, with one sweepingglance, read his advantage--that he was holding in the bonds of sympathythis man whom he could never conquer through an impersonal influence.The knowledge was a ten-fold inspiration--the point to be gained was sogreat to him; and with his voice thrilling them all with its intensity,he read on and on.
The story? Its finish was the beginning of this one; but it was toldwith a spirit that can not be transmitted by ink and paper, for theteller depended little on his written copy. He knew it by heart--knewall the tenderness of a love-story in it that was careless of the futureas the butterflies that coquette on a summer's day, passing andrepassing with a mere touch of wings, a challenge to a kiss, and thendarting hither and yon in the chase that grows laughing and eager, untileach flash of white wings in the sun bears them high above the heads oftheir comrades, as the divine passion raises all its votaries above thecommonplace. Close and closer they are drawn by the spirit that liftsthem into a new life; high and higher, until against the blue sky thereis a final flash of white wings. It is the wedding by a kiss, and thecoquettings are over--the sky closes in. They are a world of their own.
Such a love story of summer was told by him in the allegory of thebutterflies; but the young heart throbbing through it was that of thewoman-child who had wept while the two brothers had clasped hands andaccepted her as the trust of the dying; and her joyous teacher of lovehad been the fair-haired, fine-faced boy whose grief had been so greatand whose promises so fervent. It is a very old story, but anever-pathetic one--that tragedy of life; and likewise this one, withoutthought of sin, with only a fatal fondness on her part, a fatal desirefor being loved on his, and a season's farewell to be uttered, of whichthey could speak no word--the emotions that have led to more than onetragedy of soul. And one of the butterflies in this one flitted for manydays through the flowers of her garden, shy, yet happy, whispering overand over, "His wife, his wife!" while traveling southward, the otherfelt a passion of remorse in his heart, and resolved on multitudinousplans for the following of a perfection of life in the future.
All this he told--too delicately to give offense, yet too unsparinglynot to show that the evil wrought in a moment of idle pastime, of joyouscarelessness, is as fatal in its results as the most deliberate act ofpreconceived wickedness.
And back of the lives and loves of those two, with their emotionalimpulses and joyous union of untutored hearts, there arose, unloved andseemingly unloving, the quiet, watchful figure of the Esau.
Looking at his life from a distance, and perhaps through eyes ofremorse, the writer had idealized that one character, while he had onlyphotographed the others; had studied out the deeds back of every decidedaction, and discovered, or thought he had, that it was the lack ofsympathy in his home-life had made a sort of human porcupine of him, andnone had guessed that, back of the keen darts, there beat a pulse hungryfor words such as he begged from his mother at the last--and receiving,was ready to sacrifice every hope of his, present or future, that hemight prove himself worthy of the trust she had granted him, though solate.
Something in the final ignoring of self and the taking on his ownshoulders the responsibilities of those two whom his mother hadloved--something in all that, made him appear a character of heroicproportions, viewed from Stuart's point of view. He walked through thosepages as a live thing, the feeling in the author's voice testifying tohis own earnestness in the portrayal--an earnestness that seemed to gainstrength as he went along, and held his listeners with convincing poweruntil the abrupt close of the scene between those two men in the old NewOrleans house.
&n
bsp; Everyone felt vaguely surprised and disturbed when he finished--it wasall so totally unlike Stuart's stories with which he had entertainedthem before. They were unprepared for the emotions provoked; and therewas in it, and in the reading, a suggestion of something beyond all thatwas told.
The silence was so long that Stuart himself was the first to lift hiseyes to those opposite, and tried to say carelessly:
"Well?"
His face was pale, but not more so than that of Genesee, who, surprisedin that intent gaze, tried to meet his eyes steadily, but failed,faltered, wavered, and finally turned to Rachel, as if seeking in someway his former assurance. And what he saw there was the reaching out ofher hand until it touched Stuart's shoulder with a gesture of approvingcomradeship.
"Good!" she said tersely; "don't ever again talk of writing forpastime--the character of that one man is enough to be proud of."
"But there are two men," said Fred, finding her voice again, with asense of relief; "which one do you mean?"
"No," contradicted Rachel, with sharp decision; "I can see only one--theEsau."
Stuart shrank a little under her hand, not even thanking her for thewords of praise; and, to her surprise, it was Genesee who answered her,his eyes steady enough, except when looking at the author of the story.
"Don't be too quick about playing judge," he suggested; and the wordstook her back like a flash to that other time when he had given her thesame curt advice. "May be that boy had some good points that are not putdown there. Maybe he might have had plans about doing the square thing,and something upset them; or--or he might have got tangled up in alariat he wasn't looking for. It's just natural bad luck some men haveof getting tangled up like that; and may be he--this fellow--"
Fred broke out laughing at his reasoning for the defense.
"Why, Mr. Genesee," she said gleefully, "an audience of you would be aninspiration to an author or actor; you are talking about the man as ifhe was a flesh and blood specimen, instead of belonging to Mr. Stuart'simagination."
"Yes, I reckon you're right, Miss," he said, rising to his feet, with aqueer, half-apologetic smile; "you see, I'm not used to hearing folksread--romances." But the insolent sarcasm with which he had spoken ofthe word at first was gone.
The others had all regained their tongues, or the use of them, andcomment and praise were given the author--not much notice taken ofGenesee's opinion and protest. His theories of the character might benatural ones; but his own likelihood for entanglements, to judge by hisreputation, was apt to prejudice him, rendering him unduly charitabletoward any other fellow who was unlucky.
"My only objection to it," said Tillie, "is that there is not enough ofit. It seems unfinished."
"Well, he warned us in the beginning that it was only a prologue,"reminded her husband; "but there is a good deal in it, too, for only aprologue--a good deal."
"For my part," remarked the Lieutenant, "I don't think I should wantanything added to it. Just as it stands, it proves the characters of thetwo men. If it was carried further, it might gain nothing, and leavenothing for one's imagination."
"I had not thought of that," said Stuart; "in fact, it was only writtento help myself in analyzing two characters I had in my head, and couldnot get rid of until I put them on paper. Authors are haunted by suchghosts sometimes. It is Miss Fred's fault that I resurrected this oneto-night--she thrust on me the accidental remembrance."
"There are mighty few accidents in the world," was Genesee's concisestatement, as he pulled on his heavy buckskin gloves. "I'm about to cutfor camp. Going?" This to the Lieutenant.
After that laconic remark on accidents, no further word or notice wasexchanged between Stuart and Genesee; but it was easily seen that thestory read had smoothed out several wrinkles of threatened discord anddiscontent. It had at least tamed the spirit of the scout, and left himmore the man Rachel knew in him. Her impatience at his manner early inthe evening disappeared as he showed improvement; and just before theyleft, she crossed over to him, asking something of the snows on the ScotMountain trail, his eyes warming at the directness of her speech andmovement, showing to any who cared to notice that she spoke to him as toa friend; but his glance turned instinctively from her to Stuart. Heremembered watching them that day as they rode from camp.
"But what of Davy?" she repeated; "have you heard any word of him?"
"No, and I'm ashamed to say it," he acknowledged; "I haven't been to seehim at all since I got back. I've had a lot of things in my head to keeptrack of, and didn't even send. I'll do it, though, in a day or so--orelse go myself."
"I'm afraid he may be sick. If the snow is not bad, it's a wonder he hasnot been down. I believe I will go."
"I don't like you to go over those trails alone," he said in a lowertone; "not just now, at any rate."
"Why not now?"
"Well, you know these Indian troubles may bring queer cattle into thecountry. The Kootenai tribe would rather take care of you than do youharm; but--well, I reckon you had better keep to the ranch."
"And you don't reckon you can trust me to tell me why?" she said in achallenging way.
"It mightn't do any good. I don't know, you see, that it is reallydangerous, only I'd rather you'd keep on the safe side; and--and--don'tsay I can't trust you. I'd trust you with my life--yes, more than that,if I had it!"
His voice was not heard by the others, who were laughing and chatting,it was so low; but its intensity made her step back, looking up at him.
"Don't look as if I frighten you," he said quickly; "I didn't come inhere for that. You shouldn't have made me come, anyway--I belong to theoutside; coming in only helps me remember it."
"So that was what put you in such a humor. I thought it was Stuart."
"You did?"
"Yes; I know you don't like him--but, I think you are prejudiced."
"Oh, you do?" And she saw the same inscrutable smile on his face thatshe had noticed when he looked at Stuart.
"There--there," she laughed, throwing up her hand as if to check him,"don't tell me again that I am too anxious to judge people; but he is agood fellow."
"And you are a good girl," he said warmly, looking down at her with somuch feeling in his face that Stuart, glancing toward them, was startledinto strange conjectures at the revelation in it. It was the first timehe had ever seen them talking together.
"And you're a plucky girl, too," added Genesee, "else you wouldn't standhere talking to me before everyone. I'll remember it always of you.Tillikum, good-night."
PART FOURTH
ONE SQUAW MAN