"Well, now, you can just tell them it won't be this week, Mr. Dan Overton; so you can quit your plaguing. Who knows but they may be asking the same about you, if you keep fetching such pretty girls into camp? Oh, I guess you don't like bein' plagued any more than other folks."

For Overton's smile had vanished at her words, and a tiny wrinkle crept between his brows. But when she commented on it, he recovered himself, and answered carelessly:

"But I don't think I will keep on bringing pretty girls into camp--that is, I scarcely think it will grow into a steady habit," he said, and met her eyes so steadily that she dismissed all idea of any heart interest in the girl. "But I'd rather 'Tana didn't hear any chaff of that sort. You know what I mean. The boys, or any one, is like enough to joke about it at first; but when they learn 'for keeps,' that I'm not a marrying man, they'll let up. As she grows older, there'll be enough boys to bother her in camp without me. All I want is to see that she is looked after right; and that's what I'm in here to talk about this morning."

"Well, now, I'm right glad to help you all I can--which ain't much, maybe, for I never did have a sight of schooling. But I can learn her the milliner trade--though it ain't much use at the Ferry yet; but it's always a living, anyway, for a woman in a town. And as to cookin' and bakin'--"

"Oh, yes; they are all right; she will learn such things easily, I think!

But I wanted to ask about that cousin of yours--the lady who, you said, wanted to come out from Ohio to teach Indians and visit you. Is she coming?"

"Well, she writes like it. She is a fine scholar, Lavina is; but I kind o'

let up on asking her to come after I struck this camp, for she always held her head high, I hear, and wouldn't be noways proud of me as a relation, if she found me doing so much downright kitchen work. I hain't seen her since she was grow'd up, you know, and I don't know how she'd feel about it."

"If she's any good, she'll think all the more of you for having pluck to tackle any honest work that comes," said Overton, decidedly. "We all do--every man in the settlement. If I didn't, I wouldn't be asking you to look after this little girl, who hasn't any folks--father or mother--to look after her right. I thought if that lady teacher would just settle down here, I would make it worth her while to teach 'Tana."

"Well, now, that would be wise," exclaimed Mrs. Huzzard, delightedly. "An'

I'll write her a letter this very night. Or, no--not to-night," she added, "for I'll be too busy. To-night the dance is to be."

"What dance?"

"Well, now, I clean forgot to tell you about that. But it was Mr. Lyster planned it out after you left yesterday. As he's to go back East in a few days, he is to give a supper and a dance to the boys, and I just thought if they were going to have it, they might as well have it right and so it's to be here."

Overton twisted his hat around in silence for a few moments.

"What does 'Tana think of it?" he asked, at last.

"She? Why, land's sakes! She's tickled a heap over it. Indeed, to go back to the commencement, I guess it was to please her he got it up. At least, that's the way it looked to me, for she no sooner said she'd like to see a dance with this crowd at the Ferry than he said there should be one, and I should get up a supper. I tell you that young chap sets store by that little girl of yours, though she does sa.s.s him a heap. They're a fine-looking young couple, Mr. Dan."

Mr. Dan evidently agreed, for he nodded his head absently, but did not speak. He did not look especially pleased over the announcement of the dance.

"Well, I suppose she's got to learn soon or late whom to meet and whom to let alone here," he said at last, in a troubled way, "and she might as well learn now as later. Yet I wish Max had not been in such a hurry. And he promised to take good care of her on the river, did he?" he added, after another pause. "Well, he's a good fellow; but I reckon she can guide him in most things up here."

"No, indeed," answered Mrs. Huzzard, with promptness, "I heard her say myself that she had never been along this part of the Kootenai River before."

"Maybe not," he agreed. "I'm not speaking of this immediate locality. I mean that she has good general ideas about finding ways, and trails, and means. She's got ideas of outdoor life that girls don't often have, I reckon. And if she can only look after herself as well in a camp as she can on a trail, I'll be satisfied."

Mrs. Huzzard looked at him as he stared moodily out of the window.

"I see how it is," she said, nodding her head in a kindly way. "Since she's here, you're afraid some of the folks is most too rough to teach her much good. Well, well, don't you worry. We'll do the best we can, and that dead partner o' yours--her father, you know--will know you do your best; and no man can do more. I had a notion about her a.s.sociates when I let her go out on the river this morning. 'Just go along,' thought I, 'if you get into the way of making company out of real gentlemen, you'll not be so like to be satisfied with them as ain't--"

"Good enough," Dan a.s.sented, cheerily. "You have been doing a little thinking on your own account, Mrs. Huzzard? That's all right, then. I'll know that you are a conscientious care-taker, no matter how far out on a trail I am. There's another thing I wanted to say; it's this: Just you let her think that the help she gives you around the house more than pays for her keeping, will you?"

"Why, of course I will; and I'm willing enough to take her company in change for boarding, if that's all. You know I didn't want to take the money when you did pay it."

"I know; that's all right. I want you to have the money, only don't let her know she is any bill of expense to me. Understand! You see, she said something about it yesterday--thought she was a trouble to me, or some such stuff. It seemed to bother her. When she gets older, we can talk to her square about such things. But now, till she gets more used to the thought of being with us, we'll have to do some pious cheating in the matter. I'll take the responsibilities of the lies, if we have to tell any. It--it seems the only way out, you see."

He spoke a little clumsily, as though uttering a speech prepared beforehand and by one not used to memorizing, and he did not look at Mrs.

Huzzard as he talked to her.

But she looked at him and then let her hand fall kindly on his shoulder.

She had not read romances for nothing. All at once she fancied she had found a romance in the life of Dan Overton.

"Yes, I see, as plain as need be," she said. "I see that you've brought care for yourself with that little mischief in her Indian dress; an' you take all the care on your shoulders as though it was a blessed privilege.

And she's never to know what she owes you. Well, there's my hand. I'm your friend, Dan Overton. But don't waste your days with too much care about this new pet you've brought home. That's all I've got to say. She'll never think more of you for it. Girls don't; they are as selfish as young wolves."

CHAPTER VI.

MRS HUZZARD'S SUSPICIONS.

Overton sat silent and thoughtful for a little while after Mrs. Huzzard's words. Then he glanced up and smiled at her.

"I've just been getting an idea of the direction your fancies are taking,"

he said mockingly, "and they're very pretty, but I reckon you'll change them to oblige me; what I'm doing for her is what I'd do for any other child left alone. But as this child doesn't happen to be a boy, I can't take it on the trail, and a ranger like me is not fit to look after her, anyway. I think I told you before, I'm not a marrying man, and she, of course, would not look at me if I was; so what does it matter about her thinking of me? Of course, she won't--it ain't my intention. Even if she leaves these diggings some day and forgets all about me, just as the young wolves or wildcats do--well, what difference? I've helped old b.u.ms all over the country, and never heard or wanted to hear of them again, and I'm sure it's more worth one's while to help a young girl. Now, you're a nice little woman, Mrs. Huzzard, and I like you. But if you and I are to keep on being good friends, don't you speak like that about the child and me.

It's very foolish. If she should hear it, she'd leave us some fine night, and we'd never learn her address."

Then he put on his hat, nodded to her, and walked out of the door as though averse to any further discussion of the subject.

"b.u.ms all over the country!" repeated Mrs. Huzzard, looking after him darkly. "Well, Mr. Dan Overton, it's well for you that ward of yours, as you call her, wasn't near enough to hear that speech. And you're not a marrying man, are you? Well, well, I guess there's many a man and woman, too, goes through life and don't know what they might be, just because they never meet with the right person who could help them to learn, and you're just of that sort. Not a marrying man! Humph! When there's not a better favored one along this valley--that there ain't."

She fidgeted about the dinner preparations, filled with a puzzled impatience as to why Dan Overton should thus decidedly state that he was not one of the men to marry, though all the rest of the world might fall into the popular habit if they chose.

"It's the natural ambition of creation," she declared in confidence to the dried peach-pie she was slipping from the oven. "Of course, being as I'm a widow myself, I can't just make that statement to men folks promiscuous like. But it's true, and every man ought to know it's true, and why Dan Overton--"

She paused in the midst of her soliloquy, and dropped into the nearest chair, while a light of comprehension illuminated her broad face.

"To think it never came in my mind before," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "That's it!

Poor boy! he's had a girl somewhere and she's died, I suppose, or married some other fellow; and that's why he's a bachelor at nearly thirty, I guess," she added, thoughtfully. "She must have died, and that's why he never looks as gay or goes on larks with the other boys. He just goes on a lone trail mostly, Dan does. Even his own stepfather don't seem to have much knowledge about him. Well, well! I always did feel that he had some sort of trouble lookin' out of them dark eyes of his, and his words to-day makes it plain to me all at once. Well, well!"

The pensive expression of her face, as it rested on her fat hand, was evidence that Lorena Jane Huzzard had, after all, found a romance in real life suited to her fancy, and the unconscious hero was Dan Overton. Poor Dan!

The grieving hero to whom her thoughts went out was at that moment walking in a most prosaic, lazy fashion down the main thoroughfare of the settlement. The road led down to the Ferry from seemingly nowhere in particular, for from the Ferry on both sides of the river the road dwindled into mere trails that slipped away into the wildernesses--trails traveled by few of the white race until a few short years ago, and then only by the most daring of hunters, or the most persevering of the gold-seekers.

In the paths where gold is found the dwellings of man soon follow, and the quickly erected shanties and more pretentious buildings of Sinna Ferry had grown there as evidence that the precious metals in that region were no longer visionary things of the enthusiasts, but veritable facts. The men who came to it along the water, or over the inland trails, were all in some way connected with the opening up of the new mining fields.

Overton himself had drifted up there as an independent prospector, two years before. Then, when works were got under way all along that river and lake region, when a reliable man was needed by the transfer company to get specie to their men for pay-days, it was Overton to whom was given the responsibility.

Various responsible duties he had little by little shouldered, until, as Lyster said, he seemed a necessity to a large area, yet he had not quite abandoned the dreams with which he had entered those cool Northern lands.

Some day, when the country was more settled and transportation easier, it was his intention to slip again up into the mountains, along some little streams he knew, and work out there in quietness his theories as to where the gold was to be found.

Meantime, he was contented enough with his lot. No vaulting ambition touched him. He was merely a ranger of the Kootenai country, and was as welcome in the scattered lodges of the Indians as he was in the camps of the miners. He even wore clothes of Indian make, perhaps for the novelty of them, or perhaps because the buckskin was better suited than cloth to the wild trails over which he rode. And if, at times, he drifted into talk of existence beyond the frontier, and gave one an idea that he had drunk of worldly life deep enough to be tired of it, those times were rare; even Lyster had but once known him to make reference to it--that one evening after their ride along the falls of the Kootenai.

But however tired he might at some time have grown of the life of cities, he was not at all too _blase_ to accommodate himself to Sinna Ferry. If poor Mrs. Huzzard had seen the very hearty drink of whisky with which he refreshed himself after his talk with her, she would not have been so apt to think of him with such pensive sympathy.

The largest and most popular saloon was next door to the postoffice, the care of which Dan had secured for his stepfather, as the duties of it were just about as arduous as any that gentleman would deign to accept. The mail came every two weeks, and its magnitude was of the fourth-cla.s.s order. No one else wanted it, for a man would have to possess some other means of livelihood before he could undertake it, but the captain accepted it with the att.i.tude of a veteran who was a martyr to his country. As to the other means of livelihood, that did not cause him much troubled thought, since he had chanced to fall in Dan's way just as Dan was starting up to the Kootenai country, and Dan had been the "other means"

ever since.