That Girl Montana Part 7

"Of course, I--Max Lyster--don't amount to much, but I happen to be Dan Overton's friend, and with your permission, I hope to continue with him to Sinna Ferry, and with you as well; for I am sure you must be Miss Rivers."

"If you're sure, that settles it, I suppose," she returned. "So he--he told you about me?"

"Oh, yes; we are chums, as you will learn. Then I was so fortunate as to see your brave swim after that child yesterday. You don't look any the worse for it."

"No, I'm not."

"I suppose, now, you thought that little dip a welcome break in the monotony of camp-life, while you were waiting for Dan."

She looked at him in a quick, questioning way he thought odd.

"Oh--yes. While I was waiting for--Dan," she said in a queer tone, and bent her head over the clay image.

He thought her very interesting with her boyish air, her brusqueness, and independence. Yet, despite her savage surroundings, a certain amount of education was visible in her speech and manner, and her face had no stamp of ignorance on it.

The young Kootenais silently withdrew from their races, and gathered watchfully close to the girl. Their nearness was a discomfiting thing to Lyster, for it was not easy to carry on a conversation under their watchful eyes.

"You gave them prizes, did you not?" he asked. "How much wealth must one offer to get them to run?"

"Run where?" she returned carelessly, though quietly amused at the scrutiny of the little redskins. They were especially charmed by the glitter of gold mountings on Mr. Lyster's watch-guard.

"Oh, run races--run anywhere," he said.

From a pocket of her blouse she drew forth a few blue beads that yet remained.

"This is all I had to give them, and they run just as fast for one of these as they would for a pony."

"Good enough! I'll have some races for my own edification and comfort,"

and he drew out some coins. "Will you run for this--run far over there?"

The children looked at the girl. She nodded her head, said a word or two unintelligible to him, but perfectly clear to them; for, with sharp looks at the coins and pleased yells, they leaped away to their racing.

"Now, this is more comfortable," he said. "May I sit down here? Thanks!

Now would you mind telling me whose likeness it is you are making in the clay?"

"I guess you know it's n.o.body's likeness," she answered, and again thrust it back out of sight, her face flus.h.i.+ng that he should thus make a jest of her poor efforts. "You've seen real statues, I suppose, and know how they ought to be, but you don't need to look for them in the Purcell Range."

"But, indeed, I am in earnest about your modeling. Won't you believe me?"

and the blue eyes looking into her own were so appealing, that she turned away her head half shyly, and a pink flush crept up from her throat. Miss Rivers was evidently not used to eyes with caressive tendencies and they disturbed her, for all her strangely unchildlike character.

"Of course, your work is only in the rough," he continued; "but it is not at all bad, and has real Indian features. And if you have had no teaching--"

"Huh!" and she looked at him with a mirthless smile. "Where'd any one get teaching of that sort along the Columbia River? Of course, there are some gentlemen--officers and such--about the reservations, but not one but would only laugh at such a big girl making doll babies out of mud. No, I had no teaching to do anything but read, and I did read some in a book about a sculptor, and how he made animals and people's faces out of clay.

Then I tried."

As she grew communicative, she seemed so much more what she really was in years--a child; and he noticed, with satisfaction, that she looked at him more frankly, while the suspicion faded almost entirely from her face.

"And are you going to develop into a sculptor under Overton's guardians.h.i.+p?" he asked. "You see, he has told me of his good luck."

She made a queer little sound between a laugh and a grunt.

"I'll bet the rest of the blue beads he didn't call it good luck," she returned, looking at him keenly. "Now, honest Injun--did he?"

"Honest Injun! he didn't speak of it as either good or bad luck; simply as a matter of course, that at your father's death you should look him up, and let him know you were alone. Oh, he is a good fellow, Dan is, and glad, I am sure, to be of use to you."

Her lips opened in a little sigh of content, and a swift, radiant smile was given him.

"I'm right glad you say that about him," she answered, "and I guess you know him well, too. Akkomi likes him, and Akkomi's sharp."

The winner of the race here trotted back for the coin, and Lyster showed another one, as an incentive for all to scatter along the beach again. It looked as though the two white people must pay for the grant of privacy on the river-bank.

Having grown more at ease with him, 'Tana resumed again the patting and pressing of the clay, using only a little pointed stick, while Lyster watched, with curiosity, the ingenious way in which she seemed to feel her way to form.

"Have you ever tried to draw?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Only to copy pictures, like I've seen in some papers, but they never looked right. But I want to do everything like that--to make pictures, and statues, and music, and--oh, all the lovely things there are somewhere, that I've never seen--never will see them, I suppose. Sometimes, when I get to thinking that I never will see them, I just get as ugly as a drunken man, and I don't care if I never do see anything but Indians again. I get so awful reckless. Say!" she said, again with that hard, short laugh, "girls back your way don't get wild like that, do they? They don't talk my way either, I guess."

"Maybe not, and few of them would be able, either, to do what we saw you do in this river yesterday," he said kindly. "Dan is a judge of such things, you know, and he thought you very nervy."

"Nervy? Oh, yes; I guess he'd be nervy himself if he was needed. Say! can you tell me about the camp, or settlement, at this Sinna Ferry? I never was there. He says white women are there. Do you know them?"

Lyster explained his own ignorance of the place, knowing it as he did only through Dan's descriptions.

Then she, from her bit of Indian knowledge, told him Sinna was the old north Indian name for Beaver. Then he got her to tell him other things of the Indian country, things of ghost-haunted places and strange witcheries, with which they confused the game and the fish. He fell to wondering what manner of man Rivers, the partner of Dan, had been, that his daughter had gained such strange knowledge of the wild things. But any attempt to learn or question her history beyond yesterday was always checked in some way or other.

CHAPTER IV.

DAN'S WARD.

Mr. Max Lyster was not given to the study of deep problems; his habits of thought did not run in that groove. But he did watch the young stranger with unusual interest. Her face puzzled him as much as her presence there.

"I feel as though I had seen you before," he said at last, and her face grew a shade paler. She did not look up, and when she spoke, it was very curtly:

"Where?"

"Oh, I don't know--in fact, I believe it is a resemblance to some one I know that makes me feel that way."

"I look like some one you know?"

"Well, yes, you do--a little--a lady who is a little older than you--a little more of a brunette than you; yet there is a likeness."

"Where does she live--and what is her name?" she asked, with scant ceremony.