That Girl Montana Part 22

He had marked a tree where the north stream joined the river; and finding that as a clew, they followed the stream to its source. When they reached the larger stream, navigable for a mile, they concluded to move their tents there, for no lovelier place could be found.

It was 'Tana and Overton who tramped over the lands where the streams lay, and did their own prospecting for location. He was surprised to find her knowledge of the land so accurate. The crude drawing was as a solved problem to her; she never once made a wrong turn.

"Well, I've thought over it a heap," she said, when he commented on her clever ideas. "I saw that marked tree as we went down to the Ferry, and I remembered where it was; and the trail is not hard if you only get started on it right. It's getting started right that counts--ain't it, Dan?"

There seemed fewer barriers between them in the free, out-of-door life, where no third person's views colored their own. They talked of Lyster, and missed him; yet Dan was conscious that if Lyster were with them, he would have come second instead of first in her confidences, and her friendly, appealing ways.

Whether he trusted her or not, she did not know. He had not asked a question as to how that survey of the land came to her; but he watched Harris sometimes when the girl paid him any little attention, and he could read only absolute trust in the man's eyes.

Overton was not given to keen a.n.a.lysis of people or motives; a healthy unconcern pervaded his mind as to the affairs of most people. But sometimes the girl's character, her peculiar knowledge, her mysterious past, touched him with a sense of strange confusion, yet in the midst of the confusion--the deepest of it--he had put all else aside when she appealed to him, and had followed her lead into the wilderness.

And as she ran from him with the particles of gold, and carried them, as he bade her, to Harris, he followed her with his gaze until she disappeared through the green wall of the bushes. Once he started to follow her, and then stopped, suddenly muttered something about a "cursed fool," and flung himself face down in the tall gra.s.s.

"It's got to end here," he said, aloud, as men grow used to thinking when they live alone in the woods much. Then he raised himself on his elbows and looked over the little gra.s.sy dip of the land to where the stream from the hills sparkled in the warm sun; and then away beyond to where the evergreens raised their dark heads along the heights, looking like somber guardians keeping ward over the sunny valley of the twin springs. Over them all his gaze wandered, and then up into the deep forest above him--a forest unbroken from there to the swift Columbia.

The perfect harmony of it all must have oppressed him until he felt himself the one discordant note, for he closed his eyes with a sigh that was almost a groan.

"I'll see it all again--often, I suppose," he muttered; "but never quite as it is now--never, for it's got to end. The little bits of gold I found are a warning of the changes to come here--that is the way it seems to me.

Queer how a man will change his idea of life in a year or so! There have been times when I would have rejoiced over the prospect of wealth there is here; yet all I am actually conscious of is regret that everything must change--the place--the people--all where gold is king. Pshaw! what a fool I would seem to any one else if he knew. Yet--well, I have dreamed all my days of a sort of life where absolute happiness could be lived. Other men do the same, I suppose--yes, of course. I wonder if others also come in reach of it too late. I suppose so. Well, reasoning won't change it. I marked out my own path--marked it out with as little thought as many another fool; but I've got to walk in it just the same, and cursing back don't help luck. But I had to have a little pow-wow all alone and be sorry for myself, before turning my back on the man I'd like to be--and--the rest of my dreams that have come in sight for a little while but can never come nearer--There she comes again! I'm glad of it, for she will at least keep me from drifting into dreams alone."

But she appeared to be dreaming a little herself. At any rate, the scene she had pa.s.sed through in the tent left memories too dark with feeling to be quickly dispelled, and he noticed at once the change in her face, and the traces of tears left about her eyes.

"What has hurt you?" he asked.

She shook her head and said:

"Nothing."

"Oh! So you leave here jolly enough, and run around to camp, and cry about nothing--do you?" he asked, with evident unbelief. "Were you crying for joy over those little grains of gold--or over your loneliness in being so far from the Ferry folks?"

She laughed at the mere idea of either--and laughter dispels tear traces so quickly from faces that are young. "Lonely!" she exclaimed: "lonely here? why, I feel a heap more satisfied here than down at the Ferry, where the whole place smelled like saw-mills and new lumber. I always had a grudge against saw-mills, for they spoil all the lovely woods. That is why I like all this," and she made a sweep of her arm, embracing all the territory in sight; "for in here not a tree has been touched with an ax.

Lonely here! Why, Dan, I've been so perfectly happy that I'm afraid--yes, I am. Didn't you ever feel like that--just as if you were too happy to last, and you were afraid some trouble would come and end it all?"

But Overton stooped to lift the pick he had been using, and so turned his face away from her.

"Well, I'm glad you are not getting blue over lack of company," he remarked; "for we have only commenced prospecting, you know, and it will be at least a week before we can hope to send for any one else to join us."

"A week! Do you intend to send for other folks, then?" and her tone was one of regret. "Oh, it would be all different, then. My pretty camp would be spoiled for me if folks should come talking and whistling up our creek.

Don't let any one know so soon!"

"You don't know what you are talking of," he answered, a little roughly.

"This is a business trip. We did not come up here just because we were looking for a pretty picture of a place to camp in."

"Oh!" and surprise and dismay were in the exclamation. "Then you don't care for it--you want other people just as soon as you find the rich streak where the gold is? Well"--and she looked again over their little chosen valley--"I almost hope you won't find it very soon--not for several days. I would like to live just like this for a whole week. And I thought--I was so sure you liked it, too."

"Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently enough, evidently giving his whole attention to examining the soil he had commenced to dig up again, "I like the camp all right, but we can't just stand around and admire it, if we want to accomplish what we came for. And see here, 'Tana," he said, and for the first time he looked at her with a sort of unwillingness, "you must know that this gold is going to make a big change in things for you.

You can't live out in the woods with a couple of miners and an Indian squaw, after your fortune is made--don't you see that? You must go to school, and live out in the world where your money will help you to--well, the right sort of society for a girl."

"What is the use of having money if it don't help you to live where you please?" she demanded. "I thought that was what money was for. I'd a heap rather stay poor here in the woods, with--with the folks I know, instead of going where I'll have to buy friends with money. Don't think I'd want the sort of friends who have to be baited with money, anyway."

He stared at her helplessly. She was saying to him the things he had called himself a fool for thinking. But he could not call her a fool. He could only stifle an impatient groan, and wonder how he was to reason her into thinking as other girls would think of wealth and its advantages.

"Why were you so wild about finding the gold, if you care so little for the things it brings?" he demanded, and she pointed toward the tents.

"It was for him I thought at first--of how the money would, maybe, help to make him well--get him great doctors, and all that. The world had been rough on him--people had brought him trouble, and--and I thought, maybe, I could help clear it away. That was what I had in my mind at first."

"You need things, too, don't you?--not doctors, but education--books, beautiful things. You want pictures, statues, fine music, theaters--all such things. Well, the money will help you get them, and get people to enjoy them with you. I've heard you talk to Max about how you would like to live, and what you would like to see; and I think you can soon. But, 'Tana, you will live then where people will be more critical than we are here--"

"More like Captain Leek?" she asked, with a deep wrinkle between her brows; "for if they are, I'll stay here."

"N--no; not like him; and yet they will think considerable of his sort of ideas, too," he answered, blunderingly. "One thing sure is this: When your actual work here is over, you must go at once back to Mrs. Huzzard. It was necessary for you to come, else I wouldn't have allowed it. But, little girl, when you get among those fine friends you are going to have, I don't want them to think you had a guardian up here who didn't take the first bit of civilized care of you. And that's what they would think if I let you stay here, just as though you were a boy. So you see, 'Tana, I just felt I'd have to tell you plain that you would have to try and fit yourself to city ways of living. And when you are a millionairess, as you count on being, we three partners can't keep on living in tents in the Kootenai woods."

She pulled handfuls of the plumy gra.s.ses beside her, and stared sulkily ahead of her. Evidently it was a great deal for her to understand at once.

"Would they blame you--_you_ for it, if they knew?" she asked at last.

"Yes, they would--if they knew," he said, savagely; and turning away, he walked across the little gra.s.sy level to where the abrupt little wall or ledge commenced--the one from under which the springs flowed.

She thought he was simply out of patience with her. He was going to the woods--anywhere to be rid of her and her stupid ideas; and swift as a bird, she slipped after him.

"Then I'll go, Dan," she said rea.s.suringly, catching his arm. "So don't be vexed at me for being stubborn. Come! let me look for the gold with you, and then--then I'll go when you say."

"It's a bargain," he said, briefly, and drew his arm away. "And if we are going to do any more prospecting this evening, we had better begin."

He stood facing her, with his back to the bank that was the first tiny step toward the mountain that rose dark and shadowy far above. He had walked along there before, looking with a miner's attention to the lay of the land. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and a light of comprehension brightened his eyes.

"I've got a clew to it, sure, 'Tana!" he said, eagerly. "Do you know where we are standing? Well, if I don't make a big mistake, a good-sized river once rolled along just where we are now. The little creek is all that's left of it. This soil is all a comparatively recent deposit, and it and the gold dust in it have been washed down from the mountain. Which means that this little valley is only a gateway, and the dust we found is only a trail we are to follow up to the mine from which it came. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I think so," she answered, looking at the green-covered banks, and trying to realize how they looked when a mountain river had cut its way through and covered all the pretty level where the spring stream slipped now. "But doesn't that make the gold seem farther away--much farther? Will we have to move up higher in the mountains?"

"That is a question I need time to answer, but if I am right--if there is a backing of gold ore somewhere above this old river bed, it means a much surer thing than an occasional bit of dust washed out of the mud here. But we won't ignore our little placer digging either. There is an advantage to a poor prospector in having a claim he can work without any machinery but a pick, shovel, and pan; while the gold ore needs a fortune to develop it.

Let us go back and talk to Harris, to see if his evidence substantiates my theory. If not, we will just stake out our claims on the level, and be thankful. Later we will investigate the hills."

The girl walked slowly beside him back to their camp. The shadows were commencing to lengthen. It was nearing supper time, and their day had been a busy, tiring one, for they had moved their camp many miles since dawn.

"You are very nearly worn out, aren't you?" he asked, as he noticed her tired eyes and her listless step. "You see, you would tramp along the sh.o.r.e this morning when I wanted you to stay in the boat."

"Yes, I know," she answered; "but I don't think that made me tired. Maybe it's the gold we are to find. How queer it is, Dan, that a person will want and want some one thing all his life, and he thinks it will make him so happy; and yet, when at last he gets in sight of it, he isn't happy at all. That is the way I feel about our gold. I suppose I ought to be singing and laughing and dancing for joy. I said I would, too. Yet here I am feeling as stupid as can be, and almost afraid of the fine life you say I must go to. Oh, bother! I won't think over it any more. I am going to get supper."

For while 'Tana would accept the squaw as an a.s.sistant and a gatherer of fuel, she decidedly declined to have her installed as head cook. She herself filled that office with a good deal of girlish conceit, encouraged by the praise of Overton and the approving nods of Harris.

There had been a fifth member of their party, Flap-Jacks' husband. 'Tana had bestowed that name on the squaw in the very beginning of their acquaintance. But Overton had sent him on an errand back to Sinna Ferry, not wis.h.i.+ng to have his watchful eyes prying into their plans in the very beginning of their prospecting. And it was not until he had started on his journey that the pick and pan had disclosed the golden secret of the old river bed.

Harris watched the two approach, and his keen gray eyes turned with a certain fondness from one to the other. They were as guardian angels to him, and their mutual care of him had brought them closer to each other there in the wilderness than they ever had been in the little settlement farther down the river.

"Squaw not here yet?" asked 'Tana, and at once set to work preparing things for the supper.

Harris shook his head, but at that moment their hand-maiden did return, carrying a great load of sticks for fire, and then brought to the girl a number of fine trout she had caught almost at their door. She built the fire outside, where two forked sticks had been driven into the ground, and across them a pole lay, from which kettles could be hung. As 'Tana set the coffee pot on the hot coals, the Indian woman spoke to her in that low voice which is characteristic of the red people.