Overton nodded gravely.

"You speak wisely, Akkomi," he said.

Glancing at the girl, Dan noted that she was leaning forward and gazing at him intently. Her face gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she perhaps knew what they were talking of, but she dropped back into the shadows again, and he dismissed the idea as improbable, for white girls were seldom versed in the lore of Indian jargon.

He waited a bit for Akkomi to continue, but as that dignitary evidently thought he had said enough, if Overton chose to interpret it correctly, the white man asked:

"Would it please Akkomi that I, Dan, should lead the young squaw where white families are?"

"Yes. It is that I thought of when I heard your name. I am old. I cannot take her. She has come a long way on a trail for that which has not been found, and her heart is so heavy she does not care where the next trail leads her. So it seems to Akkomi. But she saved the son of my daughter, and I would wish good to her. So, if she is willing, I would have her go to your people."

"If she is willing!" Overton doubted it, and thought of the scowl with which she had answered him before. After a little hesitation, he said: "It shall be as you wish. I am very busy now, but to serve one who is your friend I will take time for a few days. Do you know the girl?"

"I know her, and her father before her. It was long ago, but my eyes are good. I remember. She is good--girl not afraid."

"Father! Where is her father?"

"In the grave blankets--so she tells me."

"And her name--what is she called?"

But Akkomi was not to be stripped of all his knowledge by questions. He puffed at the pipe in silence and then, as Overton was as persistently quiet as himself, he finally said:

"The white girl will tell to you the things she wants you to know, if she goes with your people. If she stays here, the lodge of Akkomi has a blanket for her."

The girl was now face downward on the couch of skins, and when Overton wished to speak to her he crossed over and gently touched her shoulder. He was almost afraid she was weeping, because of the position; but when she raised her head he saw no signs of tears.

"Why do you come to me?" she demanded. "I ain't troubling the white folks any. Huh! I didn't even stop at their camp across the river."

The grunt of disdain she launched at him made him smile. It was so much more like that of an Indian than a white person, yet she was white, despite all the red manners she chose to adopt.

"No, I reckon you didn't stop at the white camp, else I'd have heard of it. But as you're alone in this country, don't you think you'd be better off where other white women live?"

He spoke in the kindliest tone, and she only bit her lip and shrugged her angular shoulders.

"I will see that you are left with good people," he continued; "so don't be afraid about that. I'm Dan Overton. Akkomi will tell you I'm square. I know where there's a good sort of white woman who would be glad to have you around, I guess."

"Is it your wife?" she demanded, with the same sullen, suspicious wrinkle between her brows.

His face paled ever so little and he took a step backward, as he looked at her through narrowing eyes.

"No, miss, it is not my wife," he said, curtly, and then walked back and sat down beside the old chief. "In fact, she isn't any relation to me, but she's the nearest white woman I know to leave you with. If you want to go farther, I reckon I can help you. Anyway, you come along across the line to Sinna Ferry, and I feel sure you'll find friends there."

She looked at him unbelievingly. "She's used to being deceived," decided Overton, as she watched him; but he stood her gaze without flinching and smiled back at her.

"Do you live there?" she asked again, in that abrupt, uncivil way, and turned her eyes to Akkomi, as though to read his countenance as well as that of the white man,--a difficult thing, however, for the head of the old man was again shrouded in his blanket, from which only the tip of his nose and his pipe protruded.

In a far corner the squaw of Akkomi was crouched, her bead-like eyes glittering with a watchful interest, as they turned from one to the other of the speakers, and missed no tone or gesture of the two so strangely met within her tepee. Overton noticed her once, and thought what a subject for a picture Lyster would think the whole thing--at long range. He would want to view it from the door of the tepee, and not from the interior.

But the questioning eyes of the girl were turned to him, and remembering them, he said:

"Live there? Well, as much--a little more than I do anywhere else of late.

I am to go there in two days; and if you are ready to go, I will take you and be glad to do it."

"You don't know anything about me," she protested.

He smiled, for her tone told him she was yielding.

"Oh, no--not much," he confessed, "but you can tell me, you know."

"I know I can, but I won't," she said, doggedly. "So I guess you'll just move on down to the ferry without me. He knows, and he says I can live here if I want to. I'm tired of the white people. A girl alone is as well with the Indians. I think so, anyway, and I guess I'll try camping with them. They don't ask a word--only what I tell myself. They don't even care whether I have a name; they would give me one if I hadn't."

"A suitable name--and a nice Indian one--for you would be, 'The Water Rat'

or 'The Girl Who Swims.' Maybe," he added, "they will hunt you up one more like poetry in books (the only place one finds poetry in Indians), 'Laughing Eyes,' or 'The One Who Smiles.' Oh, yes, they'll find you a name fast enough. So will I, if you have none. But you have, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have, and it's 'Tana," said the girl, piqued into telling by the humorous twinkle in the man's eyes.

"'Tana? Why, that itself is an Indian name, is it not? And you are not Indian."

"It's 'Tana, for short. Montana is my name."

"It is? Well, you've got a big name, little girl, and as it is proof that you belong to the States, don't you think you'd better let me take you back there?"

"I ain't going down among white folks who will turn up their noses at me, just because you found me among these redskins," she answered, scowling at him and speaking very deliberately. "I know how proud decent women are, and I ain't going among any other sort and that's settled."

"Why, you poor little one, what sort of folks have you been among?" he asked, compa.s.sionately. Her stubborn antagonism filled him with more of pity than tears could have done; it showed so much suspicion, that spoke of horrible a.s.sociations, and she was so young!

"See here! No one need know I found you among the Indians. I can make up some story--say you're the daughter of an old partner of mine. It'll be a lie, of course, and I don't approve of lies. But if it makes you feel better, it goes just the same! Partner dies, you know, and I fall heir to you. See? Then, of course, I pack you back to civilization, where you can--well, go to school or something. How's that?"

She did not answer, only looked at him strangely, from under those straight brows. He felt an angry impatience with her that she did not take the proposal differently, when it was so plainly for her good he was making schemes.

"As to your father being dead--that part of it would be true enough, I suppose," he continued; "for Akkomi told me he was dead."

"Yes--yes, he is dead," she said coldly, and her tones were so even no one would imagine it was her father she spoke of.

"Your mother, too?"

"My mother, too," she a.s.sented. "But I told you I wasn't going to talk any more about myself, and I ain't. If I can't go to your Sunday-school without a pedigree, I'll stop where I am--that's all."

She spoke with the independence of a boy, and it was, perhaps, her independence that induced the man to be persistent.

"All right, 'Tana," he said cheerfully. "You come along on your own terms, so long as you get out of these quarters. I'll tell the dead partner story--only the partner must have a name, you know. Montana is a good name, but it is only a half one, after all. You can give me another, I reckon."

She hesitated a little and stared at the glowing embers of the lodge fire.

He wondered if she was deciding to tell him a true one, or if she was trying to think of a fict.i.tious one.

"Well?" he said at last.