Told In The Hills Part 4

"Mowitza; what a musical name!" she remarked as she followed the new guide to the trail leading down the mountain. "It sounds Russian--is it?"

"No; another Chinook word--look out there; these stones are bad ones to balance on, they're too round, and that gully is too deep below to make it safe."

"I'm all right," she announced in answer to the warning as she amused herself by hopping bird-like from one round, insecure bowlder to another, and sending several bounding and cras.h.i.+ng into the gully that cut deep into the heart of the mountain. "I can manage to keep my feet on your hills, even if I can't speak their language. By the way, I suppose you don't care to add Professor of Languages to your other t.i.tles, do you, Mr. Jack Genesee?"

"I reckon I'm in the dark now, Miss, sort of blind-fold--can't catch onto what you mean."

"Oh, I was just thinking I might take up the study of Chinook while out here, and go back home overwhelming the natives by my novel accomplishment." And she laughed so merrily at the idea, and looked so quizzically at Genesee Jack's dark, serious face, that he smiled in sympathy.

They had only covered half the trail leading down to the camp, but already, through the slightly strange and altogether unconventional meeting, she found herself making remarks to him with the freedom of a long-known chum, and rather enjoying the curious, puzzled look with which he regarded her when she was quick enough to catch him looking at her at all.

"Stop a moment," she said, just as the trail plunged from the open face of the mountain into the shadow of spruce and cedar. "You see this every morning, I suppose, but it is a grand treat to me. See how the light has crept clear down to the level land now. I came up here long before there was a sign of the sun, for I knew the picture would be worth it. Isn't it beautiful?"

Her eyes, alight with youth and enthusiasm, were turned for a last look at the sun-kissed country below, to which she directed his attention with one bare, outstretched hand.

"Yes, it is," he agreed; but his eyes were not on the valley of the Kootenai, but on the girl's face.

CHAPTER III.

WHAT IS A SQUAW MAN?

"Rache, I want you to stop it." The voice had an insinuating tone, as if it would express "will you stop it?"

The speaker was a chubby, matronly figure, enthroned on a ha.s.sock of spruce boughs, while the girl stretched beside her was drawing the fragrant spikes of green, bit by bit, over closed eyes and smiling; only the mouth and chin could be seen under the green veil, but the corners of the mouth were widening ever so little. Smiles should engender content; they are supposed to be a voucher of sweet thoughts, but at times they have a tendency to bring out all that is irritable in human nature, and the chubby little woman noted that growing smile with rising impatience.

"I am not jesting," she continued, as if there might be a doubt on that question; "and I wish you would stop it."

"You haven't given it a name yet. Say, Clara, that sounds like an invitation to drink, doesn't it?--a western invitation."

But her fault-finder was not going to let her escape the subject like that.

"I am not sure it has a name," she said curtly. "No one seems to know whether it is Genesee Jack or Jack Genesee, or whether both are not aliases--in fact, the most equivocal sort of companion for a young girl over these hills."

"What a tempest you raise about nothing, Clara," said the girl good-humoredly; "one would think that I was in hourly danger of being kidnaped by Mr. Genesee Jack--the name is picturesque in sound, and suits him, don't you think so? But I am sure the poor man is quite harmless, and stands much more in awe of me than I do of him."

"I believe you," a.s.sented her cousin tartly. "I never knew you to stand in awe of anything masculine, from your babyhood. You are a born flirt, for all your straightforward, independent ways. Oh, I know you."

"So I hear you say," answered Miss Hardy, peering through the screen of cedar sprays, her eyes s.h.i.+ning a little wickedly from their shadows.

"You have a hard time of it with me, haven't you, dear? By the way, Clara, who prompted you to this lecture--Hen?"

"No, Hen did not; neither he nor Alec seem to have eyes or ears for anything but deer and caribou; they are constantly airing their new-found knowledge of the country. I had to beg Alec to come to sleep last night, or I believe they would have gossiped until morning. The one redeeming point in your Genesee Jack is that he doesn't talk."

"He isn't my Genesee Jack," returned the girl; "but he does talk, and talk well, I think. You do not know him, that is all, and you never will, with those starchy manners of yours. Not talk!--why, he has taught me a lot of Chinook, and told me all about a miner's life and a hunter's. Not talk!--I've only known him a little over a week, and he has told me his life for ten years back."

"Yes, with no little encouragement from you, I'll wager."

"Well, my b.u.mp of curiosity was enlarged somewhat as to his life,"

acknowledged the girl. "You see he has such an unusual personality, unusually interesting, I mean. I never knew any man like him in the East. Why, he only needs a helmet instead of the sombrero, and armor instead of the hunting suit, and he would make an ideal Launcelot."

"Good gracious, Rache! do stop raving over the man, or I shall certainly have Hen discharge him and take you back to civilization at once."

"But perhaps I won't go back--what then; and perhaps Hen could not be able to see your reason for getting rid of a good guide," said the girl coolly, knowing she had the upper hand of the controversy; "and as to the raving, you know I never said a word about him until you began to find fault with everything, from the cut of his clothes to the name he gives, and then--well, a fellow must stand up for his friends, you know."

"Of course a fellow must," agreed someone back of them, and the young ranchman from the East came down under the branches from the camp-fire just kindled; "that is a manly decision, Rache, and does you credit. But what's the argument?"

"Oh, Clara thinks I am taking root too quickly in the soil of loose customs out here," explained the girl, covering the question, yet telling nothing.

"She doesn't approve of our savage mode of life, does she?" he queried, sympathetically; "and she hasn't seen but a suggestion of its horrors yet. Too bad Jim Kale did not come; she could have made the acquaintance of a specimen that would no doubt be of interest to her--a squaw man with all his native charms intact."

"Hen," said the girl, rising on her elbow, "I wish you would tell me just what you mean by a 'squaw man'; is it a man who buys squaws, or sells them, or eats them, or--well, what does he do?"

"He marries them--sometimes," was the laconic reply, as if willing to drop the question. But Miss Rache, when interested, was not to be thrust aside until satisfied.

"Is that all?" she persisted; "is he a sort of Mormon, then--an Indian Mormon? And how many do they marry?"

"I never knew them to marry more than one," hazarded Mr. Hardy. "But, to tell the truth, I know very little about their customs; I understand they are generally a worthless cla.s.s of men, and the term 'squaw man' is a stigma, in a way--the most of them are rather ashamed of it, I believe."

"I don't see why," began Rache.

"No, I don't suppose you do," broke in her cousin Hardy with a relative's freedom, "and it is not necessary that you should; just confine your curiosity to other phases of Missoula County that are open for inspection, and drop the squaw men."

"I haven't picked up any of them yet," returned the girl, rising to her feet, "but I will the first chance I get; and I give you fair warning, you might as well tell me all I want to know, for I will find out."

"I'll wager she will," sighed Clara, as the girl walked away to where their traps and sachels were stacked under a birch tree, and while she turned things topsy-turvy looking for something, she nodded her head sagaciously over her shoulder at the two left behind; "to be sure she will--she is one of the girls who are always stumbling on just the sort of knowledge that should be kept from them; and this question of your horrid social system out here--well, she will know all about it if she has to interview Ivans or your guide to find out; and I suppose it is an altogether objectionable topic?"

The intonation of the last words showed quite as much curiosity as the girl had declared, only it was more carefully veiled.

"Oh, I don't know as it is," returned her brother; "except under--well--circ.u.mstances. But, some way, a white man is mightily ashamed to have it known that he has a squaw wife. Ivans told me that many of them would as soon be shot as to have it known back East where they came from."

"Yes," remarked a gentleman who joined them during this speech, and whose brand-new hunting suit bespoke the "got-up-regardless" tourist; "it is strange, don't you think so? Why, back East we would hear of such a marriage and think it most romantic; but out here--well, it seems hard to convince a Westerner that there is any romance about an Indian."

"And I don't wonder, Alec, do you?" asked Mrs. Houghton, turning to her husband as if sure of sympathy from him; "all the squaws we have seen are horribly slouchy, dirty creatures. I have yet to see the Indian maiden of romance."

"In their original state they may have possessed all the picturesque dignities and chivalrous character ascribed to them," answered Mr.

Houghton, doubtfully; "but if so, their contact with the white race has caused a vast degeneration."

"Which it undoubtedly has," returned Hardy, decidedly. "Mixing of races always has that effect, and in the Indian country it takes a most decided turn. The Siwash or Indian men of this territory may be a thieving, whisky-drinking lot, but the chances are that nine-tenths of the white men who marry among them become more worthless and degraded than the Indian."

"There are, I suppose, exceptions," remarked Houghton.

"Well, there may be," answered Hardy, "but they are not taken into consideration, and that is why a man dislikes to be cla.s.sed among them.

There is something of the same feeling about it that there is back home about a white man marrying a negro."

"Then why do they do it, if they are ashamed of it?" queried Mrs.

Houghton with logical directness.