That Girl Montana Part 41

The color had crept into her face once more. She knew what the man meant, and knew that the longer they looked on her with suspicion, the more time Overton would have to escape. Then, when they learned they were on a false scent, it would be late--too late to start after him. She wished he had taken the money and the gold. She shuddered as she thought him a murderer--the murderer of that man; but, with what skill she could, she would keep them off his track.

Her thoughts ran fast, and a half smile touched her lips. Even with that dead body at her feet, she was almost happy at the hope of saving him. The others noticed it, and looked at her in wonder. Lyster said:

"You are right. But Miss Rivers could know nothing of this. She has been with us since the moon rose, and that is more than a half-hour."

"No, only fifteen minutes," said one of the men.

"Well, where were you for the half-hour before the moon rose?" asked the man who seemed examiner. "That is really the time most interesting to this case."

"Why, good heavens, man!" cried Lyster, but 'Tana interrupted:

"I was walking up on the hill about that time."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

Mrs. Huzzard groaned dismally, and Lyster caught 'Tana by the hand.

"'Tana! think what you are saying. You don't realize how serious this is."

"One more question," and the man looked at her very steadily. "Were you not expecting this man to-night?"

"I sha'n't answer any more of your questions," she answered, coldly.

Lyster turned on the man with clenched hands and a face white with anger.

"How dare you insult her with such a question?" he asked, hoa.r.s.ely. "How could it be possible for Miss Rivers to know this renegade horse-thief?"

"Well, I'll tell you," said the man, drawing a long breath and looking at the girl. "It ain't a pleasant thing to do; but as we have no courts up here, we have to straighten out crimes in a camp the best way we can. My name is Saunders. That man over there is right--this is Lee Holly; and I am sure now that I saw him leave this cabin last night. I pa.s.sed the cabin and heard voices--hers and a man's. I heard her say: 'While I can't quite decide to kill you myself, I hope some one else will.' The rest of their words were not so clear. I told Overton when he came back, but the man was gone then. You ask me how I dare think she could tell something of this if she chose. Well, I can't help it. She is wearing a ring I'll swear I saw Lee Holly wear three years ago, at a card table in Seattle. I'll swear it! And he is lying here dead in her room, with a knife sticking in him that she had possession of to-day. Now, gentlemen, what do you think of it yourselves?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

GOOD-BY.

"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 a.s.sured 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 h.e.l.l 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 Sloc.u.m 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 Sloc.u.m, 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 Sloc.u.m, "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 Sloc.u.m 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.