That Girl Montana Part 50

"I told you yes twenty-five years ago, Alf Leek," she answered.

He sighed helplessly. His old aggressive manner was all gone. The tactics he would adopt for any other woman were useless with this one. She knew him like a book. She had him completely cowed and miserable. No longer did he regale admiring friends with tales of the late war, and incidentally allow himself to be thought a hero. One look from Lavina would freeze the story of the hottest battle that ever was fought.

To be sure, she had as yet refrained from using words against him; but how long would she refrain? That question he had asked himself until, in despair, a loop-hole from her quiet vengeance had occurred to him, and he had asked her to marry him.

"You never could--would marry any one else," he said, pleadingly.

"Oh, couldn't I?"

"And I couldn't, either, Lavina," he continued, looking at her sentimentally. But Lavina knew better.

"You would, if anybody would have you," she retorted. "I know I reached here just in time to keep poor Lorena Jane from being made a victim of.

You would have been a tyrant over her, with your great pretensions, if I hadn't stopped it. You always were tyrannical, Alf Leek; and the only time you're humble as you ought to be is when you meet some one who can tyrannize over you. You are one of the sort that needs it."

"That's why I asked you to marry me," he remarked, meekly.

And after a moment she said:

"Well, thinking of it from that point of view, I guess I will."

Far up on the heights, a man lying there alone saw the canoe with the man and the woman in it, and it brought back to him keen rushes of memory from the summer time that had been. It was only a year ago that 'Tana had stepped into his canoe, and gone with him to the new life of the settlement. How brave she had been! how daring! He liked best to remember her as she had been then, with all the storms and suns.h.i.+ne of her face. He liked to remember that she had said she would be cook for him, but for no other man. Of course her words were a child's words, soon forgotten by her. But all her words and looks and their journeys made him love the land he had known her in. They were all the treasures he had with which to comfort his loneliness.

And when in the twilight he descended to the camp, Joe--or his own longings--had won.

"I will send the telegram for you, old fellow," he said, and that was all.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AGAIN ON THE KOOTENAI.

Another canoe, with a woman in it, skimmed over the waters in the twilight that evening--a woman with all the gladness of youth in her bright eyes, and an eagerness for the north country that far outstripped the speed of the boat.

Each dark tree-trunk as it loomed up from the sh.o.r.es, each glint of the after-glow as it lighted the ripples, each whisper of the fresh, soft wind of the mountains, was to her as a special welcome. All of them touched her with the sense of a friends.h.i.+p that had been faithful. That she was no more to them than any of the strangers who came and went on the current, she could not believe; for they all meant so much, so very much to her.

She asked for a paddle, that she might once more feel against her strength the strong rush of the mountain river. She caressed its waves and reached out her hands to the bending boughs, and laughter and sighs touched her lips.

"Never again!" she whispered, as if a promise was being made; "never again! my wilderness!"

The man who had charge of the canoe--a stalwart, red-whiskered man of perhaps forty-five--looked at her a good deal in a cautious way. She was so unlike any of the girls he had ever seen--so gay, so free of speech with each stranger or Indian who came their way; so daintily garbed in a very correct creation of some city tailor; and, above all, so tenderly careful of a child who slept among the rugs at her feet, and looked like a bit of pink blossom against the dark furs.

"You are a stranger here, aren't you?" she asked the man. "I saw no one like you running a boat here last summer."

"No, no," he said, slowly; "I didn't then. My camp is east of Bonner's Ferry, quite a ways; but I get around here sometimes, too. I don't run a boat only for myself; but when they told me a lady wanted to get to Twin Springs, I didn't allow no scrub Indians to take her if my boat was good enough."

"It is a lovely boat," she said, admiringly; "the prettiest I ever saw on this river, and it is very good of you to bring me yourself. That is one of the things makes me realize I am in the West once more--to be helped simply because I am a girl alone. And you didn't even know my name when you offered to bring me."

"No, but I did before I left sh.o.r.e," he answered; "and then I counted myself kind of lucky. I--I've heard so much about you, miss, from folks up at Twin Springs; from one lady there in particular--Mrs. Huzzard."

"Oh! so you know her, do you?" she asked, and wondered at the self-conscious look with which he owned up that he did--a little.

"A little? Oh, that is not nearly enough," she said, good-naturedly.

"Lorena Jane is worth knowing a good deal of."

"That's my opinion, too," he agreed; "but a fellow needs some help sometimes, if he ain't over handy with the gift of gab."

"Well, now, I should not think you would need much help," she answered.

"You ought to be the sort she would make friends with quick enough."

"Oh, yes--friends," he said, and sent the canoe on with swifter, stronger strokes. The other boat, paddled by Indians and carrying baggage, was left far behind.

"You make this run often?" she asked, with a little wonder as to who the man was. His dress was much above the average, his boat was a beautiful and costly thing, and she had not learned, in the haste of her departure, who her boatman was.

"Not very often. Haven't been up this way for two weeks now."

"But that is often," she said. "Are you located in this country?"

"Well--yes, I have been. I struck a silver lode across the hills in yon direction. I've sold out and am only prospecting around just now, not settled anywhere yet. My name is McCoy."

"McCoy!" and like a flash she remembered the post-script of Mrs. Huzzard's letter. "Oh, yes--I've heard of you."

"You have? Well, that's funny. I didn't know my name had got beyond the ranges."

"Didn't you? Well, it got across the country to Manhattan Island--that's where I was when it reached me," and she smiled quizzically. "You know Mrs. Huzzard writes me letters sometimes."

"And do you mean--did she--"

"Yes, she did--mentioned your name very kindly, too," she said, as he hesitated in a confused way. Then, with all the gladness of home-coming in her heart and her desire that no heart should be left heavy, she added: "And, really, as I told you before, I don't think you need much help."

The kindly, smiling eyes of the man thanked her, as he drove the canoe through the clear waters. Above them the stars were commencing to gleam faintly, and all the sweet odors of the dusk floated by them, and the sweetest seemed to come to her from the north.

"We will not stop over--let us go on," she said, when he spoke of Sinna Ferry. "I can paddle while you rest at times, or we can float there on the current if we both grow tired; but let us keep going."

But ere they reached the little settlement, a canoe swept into sight ahead of them and when it came near, Captain Leek very nearly fell over the side of it in his anxiety to make himself known to Miss Rivers.

"Strangest thing in the world!" he declared. "Here I am, sent down to telegraph you and wait a week if need be until an answer comes; and half-way on my journey I meet you just as if the message had reached you in some way before it was even put on paper. Extraordinary thing--very!"

"You were going to telegraph me? What for?" and the lightness of her heart was chased away by fear. "Is--is any one hurt?"

"Hurt? Not a bit of it. But Harris thinks he is worse and wanted you, until Dan concluded to ask you to come. I have the message here somewhere," and he drew out a pocket-book.

"Dan asked me to come? Let me see it, please," and she unfolded the paper and read the words he had written--the only time she had ever seen his writing in a message to her.

A lighted match threw a flickering light over the page, on which he said:

"Joe is worse. He wants you. Will you come back?