Told in the Hills: A Novel Page 6

  CHAPTER V.

  AT LAST CAMP.

  After their stop at the Indian camp, which Genesee explained was aberrying crowd from the Kootenai tribe, there was, of course, commentamong the visitors as to the mixed specimens of humanity they had seenthere.

  "I don't wonder a white man is ashamed of an Indian wife," said Mrs.Houghton. "What slouchy creatures!"

  "All the more reason for a white man to act the part of missionary, andmarry them," remarked Rachel Hardy, "and teach them what the domesticlife of a woman should be."

  Genesee turned square around to look at the speaker--perhaps she did notstrike him as being a domestic woman herself. Whatever the cause of thatquick attention, she noticed it, and added: "Well, Mr. Genesee, don'tyou think so? You must have seen considerable of that sort of life."

  "I have--some," he answered concisely, but showing no disposition todiscuss it, while Mrs. Houghton was making vain efforts to engage MissHardy's attention by the splendid spread of the country below them; butit was ineffectual.

  "Yes, Clara, I see the levels along that river--I've been seeing themfor the past two hours--but just now I am studying the social system ofthose hills"; and then she turned again to their guide. "You did notanswer my question, Mr. Genesee," she said, ignoring Mrs. Houghton'sadmonishing glances. "Do you not agree with my idea of marriages betweenwhites and Indians?"

  "No!" he said bluntly; "most of the white men I know among the Indiansneed themselves to be taught how people should live; they need whitewomen to teach them. It's uphill work showing an Indian how to livedecently when a man has forgotten how himself. Missionary work! Squawmen are about as fit for that as--as hell's fit for a powder-house."

  And under this emphatic statement and the shocked expression of Clara'sface, Miss Hardy collapsed, with the conviction that there must belights and shades of life in the Indian country that were not apparentto the casual visitor. She wondered sometimes that Genesee had livedthere so long with no family ties, and she seldom heard him speak of anywhite friend in Montana--only of old Davy MacDougall sometimes. Most ofhis friends had Indian names. Altogether, it seemed a purposeless sortof existence.

  "Do you expect to live your life out here, like this?" she asked himonce. "Don't you ever expect to go back home?"

  "Hardly! There is nothing to take me back now."

  "And only a horse and a gun to keep you here?" she smiled.

  "N--no; something besides, Miss. I've got a right smart of a ranch onthe other side of the Maple range. It's running wild--no stock on it;but in Tamahnous Hill there's a hole I've been digging at for the pastfour years. MacDougall reckons I'm 'witched' by it, but it may pan outall right some of these days."

  "Gold hunting?"

  "No, Miss, silver; and it's there. I've got tired more than once andgiven it the klatawa (the go-by); but I'd always come back, and Ireckon I always will until I strike it."

  "And then?"

  "Well, I haven't got that far yet."

  And thus any curiosity about the man's life or future was generallysilenced. He had told her many things of the past; his life in the minesof Colorado and Idaho, with now and then the diversion of a governmentscout's work along the border. All of that he would speak of withoutreserve, but of the actual present or of the future he would saynothing.

  "I have read somewhere in a book of a man without a past," remarked thegirl to Mrs. Hardy; "but our guide seems a man utterly without afuture."

  "Perhaps he does not like to think of it here alone," suggested Tilliethoughtfully; "he must be very lonely sometimes. Just see how he lovesthat horse!"

  "Not a horse, Tillie--a klootchman kiuatan," corrected the student ofChinook; "If you are going to live out here, you must learn the languageof the hills."

  "You are likely to know it first;" and then, after a little, she added:"But noticing that man's love for his Mowitza, I have often thought howkind he would be to a wife. I think he has a naturally affectionatenature, though he does swear--I heard him; and to grow old and wild hereamong the Indians and squaw men seems too bad. He is intelligent--a manwho might accomplish a great deal yet. You know he is comparativelyyoung--thirty-five, I heard Hen say."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Houghton sarcastically; "a good age at which to adopt achild. You had better take him back as one of the fixtures on the ranch,Tillie; of course he may need some training in the little courtesies oflife, but no doubt Rachel would postpone her return East and offer herservices as tutor;" and with this statement Mistress Houghton showed herdisgust of the entire subject.

  "She is 'riled,'" said the girl, looking quizzically after the plumpretreating form.

  "Why, what in the world--"

  "Nothing in the world, Tillie, and that's what's the matter with Clara.Her ideas of the world are, and always will be, bounded by the rules andregulations of Willow Centre, Kentucky. Of course it isn't to be foundon a map of the United States, but it's a big place to Clara; and shedoesn't approve of Mr. Genesee because he lives outside its knowledge.She intimated yesterday that he might be a horse-thief for any actualacquaintance we had with his resources or manner of living."

  "Ridiculous!" laughed Tillie. "That man!"

  The girl slipped her arm around the little wife's waist and gave her ahug like a young bear. She had been in a way lectured and snubbed bythat man, but she bore no malice.

  The end of their cultus corrie was reached as they went into camp fora two-days' stay, on the shoulder of a mountain from which one couldlook over into the Idaho hills, north into British Columbia, and throughthe fair Kootenai valleys to the east, where the home-ranch lay.

  Houghton and Hardy each had killed enough big game to become inoculatedwith the taste for wild life, and the ladies were delighted with theidea of having the spoils of the hunt for the adornment of their homes;and altogether the trip was voted a big success.

  Is there anything more appetizing, after a long ride through themountains, than to rest under the cedars at sunset and hear the sizzleof broiled meat on the red coals, and have the aroma of coffee borne toyou on the breeze that would lull you to sleep if you were not sohungry?

  "I could have eaten five meals during every twenty-four hours since westarted," acknowledged Rachel, as she watched with flattering attentionthe crisping slices of venison that were accumulating on a platter bythe fire.

  And she looked as if both the appetite and the wild living had agreedwith her. Clara complained that Rachel really seemed to pride herself onthe amount of tan she had been able to gather from the wind and the sun,while Hardy decided that only her light hair would keep her from beingtaken for an Indian.

  But for all the looks that were gaining a tinge of wildness, and theappetites that would persist in growing ravenous, it was none the less ajolly, pleasant circle that gathered about the evening meal, sometimeseaten on a large flat stone, if any were handy, and again on the grass,where the knives and small articles of table-ware would lose themselvesin the tall spears; but, whatever was used as a table, the meal in theevening was the domestic event of the day. At midday there was often buta hasty lunch; breakfast was simply a preparation for travel; but in theevening all were prepared for rest and the enjoyment of either eatablesor society. And until the darkness fell there was the review of theday's hunt by the men--Hardy and Houghton vying with each other in theirrecitals--or, as Ivans expressed it, "swappin' lies"--around the fire.Sometimes there would be singing, and blended with the notes ofnight-birds in the forest would sound the call of human throats echoingupward in old hymns that all had known sometime, in the East. And againTillie would sing them a ballad or a love-song in a sweet, fresh voice;or, with Clara, Hardy, and Houghton, a quartette would add volume tosome favorite, their scout a silent listener. Rachel never sang with therest; she preferred whistling, herself. And many a time when out ofsight of her on the trail, she was located by that boyish habit she hadof echoing the songs of many of the birds that were new to her, learningtheir notes, and imitating them so well as to bring many a decoyedan
swer from the woods.

  Between herself and the guide there was no more their formercomaraderie. They had never regained their old easy, friendly manner.Still, she asked him that night at "last camp" of the music of theIndians. Had they any? Could he sing? Had there ever been any of theirmusic published? etc.

  And he told them of the airs that were more like chants, like the echoesof whispering or moaning forests, set to human words; of the duskythroats that, without training, yet sang together with never a discord;of the love-songs that had in them the minor cadences of sadness. Onlytheir war-songs seemed to carry brightness, and they only when echoes ofvictory.

  In the low, glowing light of the fire, when the group around it faded inthe darkness, he seemed to forget his many listeners, and talked on asif to only one. To the rest it was as if they had met a stranger therethat evening for the first time, and found him entertaining. Even Mrs.Houghton dropped her slightly supercilious manner toward him, a changeto which he was as indifferent as to her coolness. It may have beenTillie's home-songs in the evening that unlocked his lips; or it mayhave been the realization that the pleasure-trip was ended--that in ashort time he would know these people no more, who had brought himhome-memories in their talk of home-lives. It may have been a dash ofrecklessness that urged him to enjoy it for a little only--thisassociation that suggested so much to which he had long been a stranger.Whatever the impulse was, it showed a side of his nature that onlyRachel had gained any knowledge of through those first bright, eagerdays of their cultus corrie.

  At Tillie's request he repeated some remembered fragments of Indiansongs that had been translated into the Red's language, and of which hegave them the English version or meaning as well as he could. A coupleof them he knew entire, and to Tillie's delight he hummed the plaintiveairs until she caught the notes. And even after the rest had quietlywithdrawn and rolled themselves in blankets for the night's rest, Hardyand his wife and Genesee still sat there with old legends of Tsiatko,the demon of the night, for company, and with strange songs in which themusic would yet sound familiar to any ears used to the shrilling of thewinds through the timber, or the muffled moans of the wood-dove.

  And in the sweet dusk of the night, Rachel, the first to leave the fire,lay among the odorous, spicy branches of the cedar and watched thepicture of the group about the fire. All was in darkness, save when abit of reflected red would outline form or feature, and they lookedrather uncanny in the red-and-black coloring. An Indian council or thegrouping of witches and warlocks it might have been, had one judged thescene only from sight. But the voices of the final three, dropped lowthough they were for the sake of the supposed sleepers, yet had a toneof pleasant converse that belied their impish appearance.

  Those voices came to Rachel dreamily, merging their music with thedrowsy odors of a spruce pillow. And through them all she heard Tillieand Genesee singing a song of some unlettered Indian poet:

  "Lemolo mika tsolo siah polaklie, Towagh tsee chil-chil siah saghallie. Mika na chakko?--me sika chil-chil, Opitsah! mika winapia, Tsolo--tsolo!"

  "Wild do I wander, far in the darkness, Shines bright a sweet star far up above. Will you not come to me? you are the star, Sweetheart! I wait, Lost!--in the dark!"

  And the white girl's mouth curled dubiously in that smile that alwaysvanquished the tender curves of her lips, and then dropped asleepwhispering the refrain, "Tsolo--tsolo!"