"I can't talk to anyone of her--yet," he answered, avoiding her eyes; "only I wanted you to understand--it is at least a little step toward that level where you fancy I may belong. Don't speak of it again; I can hardly say what impelled me to tell you now. Yes, it is a woman I cared for, and who was--lost--whom I lost--long ago."

A moment later she was alone, and could hear his step in the outer room, then on the porch. Fred called after him, but he made no halt--did not even answer, much to the surprise of that young lady and Miss Margaret.

The other girl sat watching him until he disappeared in the stables, and a little later saw him emerge and ride at no slow gait out over the trail toward camp.

"It only needed that finale," she soliloquized, "to complete the picture. Woman! woman! What a disturbing element you are in the universe--man's universe!"

After this bit of trite philosophy, the smile developed into a noiseless laugh that had something of irony in it.

"I rather think Talapa's entrance was more dramatic," was one of the reflections that kept her company; "anyway, she was more picturesque, if less elegant, than Mrs. Stuart is likely to be. Mrs. Stuart! By the way, I wonder if it is Mrs. Stuart? Yes, I suppose so--yet, 'a woman whom I cared for, and who was lost--long ago!'--Lost? lost?"

CHAPTER VIII.

"I'LL KILL HIM THIS TIME!"

Rumors were beginning to drift into camp of hostile intents of the Blackfeet; and a general feeling of uneasiness became apparent as no word came from the chief of their scouts, who had not shown up since locating the troops.

The Major's interest was decidedly alive in regard to him, since not a messenger entered camp from any direction who was not questioned on the subject. But from none of them came any word of Genesee.

Other scouts were there--good men, too, and in the southern country of much value; but the Kootenai corner of the State was almost an unknown region to them. They were all right to work under orders; but in those hills, where everything was in favor of the native, a man was needed who knew every gully and every point of vantage, as well as the probable hostile.

While Major Dreyer fretted and fumed over the absentee, there was more than one of the men in camp to remember that their chief scout was said to be a squaw man; and as most of them shared his own expressed idea of that cla.s.s, conjectures were set afloat as to the probability of his not coming back at all, or if it came to a question of fighting with the northern Indians, whether he might not be found on the other side.

"You can't bet any money on a squaw man," was the decision of one of the scouts from over in Idaho--one who did not happen to be a squaw man himself, because the wife of his nearest neighbor at home objected. "No, gentlemen, they're a risky lot. This one is a good man; I allow that--a d.a.m.ned good man, I may say, and a fighter from away back; but the thing we have to consider is that up this way he's with his own people, as you may say, having taken a squaw wife and been adopted into the tribe; an'

I tell you, sirs, it's jest as reasonable that he will go with them as against them--I'm a tellin' you!"

Few of these rumors were heard at the ranch. It was an understood thing among the men that the young ladies at Hardy's were to hear nothing of camp affairs that was likely to beget alarm; but Stuart heard them, as did the rest of the men; and like them, he tried to question the only one in camp who shared suspicion--Kalitan. But Kalitan was unapproachable in English, and even in Chinook would condescend no information. He doubtless had none to give, but the impression of suppressed knowledge that he managed to convey made him an object of close attention, and any attempt to leave camp would have been hailed as proof positive of many intangible suspicions. He made no such attempt.

On the contrary, after his arrival there from the Gros Ventres, he seemed blissfully content to live all winter on Government rations and do nothing. But he was not blind by any means and understanding English, though he would not speak it, the chances were that he knew more of the thought of the camp than it guessed of his; and his stubborn resentment showed itself when three Kootenai braves slouched into camp one day, and Kalitan was not allowed to speak to them save in the presence of an interpreter, and when one offered in the person of a white scout, Kalitan looked at him with unutterable disdain, and turning his back, said not a word.

The Major was not at camp. He had just left to pay his daily visit to Hardy's; for, despite all persuasions, he refused to live anywhere but with his men, and if Fred did not come to see him in the morning, he was in duty bound to ride over to her quarters in the afternoon.

The officer in command during his absence was a Captain Holt, a man who had no use for an Indian in any capacity, and whose only idea of settling the vexed question of their rights was by total extermination and grave-room--an opinion that is expressed by many a white man who has had to deal with them. But he was divided between his impulse to send the trio on a double-quick about their business and the doubt as to what effect it would have on the tribe if they were sent back to it in the sulks. Ordinarily he would not have given their state of mind a moment's consideration; but the situation was not exactly ordinary, and he hesitated.

After stowing away enough provender in their stomachs to last an ordinary individual two days, and stowing the remainder in convenient receptacles about their draperies, intercourse was resumed with their white hosts by the suggestive Kalitan.

Just then Stuart and Rachel rode into camp. They had taken to riding together into camp, and out of camp, and in a good many directions of late; and in the coffee-colored trio she at once recognized the brave of the bear-claws whom she had spoken with during that "olallie" season in the western hills, and who she had learned since was a great friend of Genesee's. She spoke to him at once--a great deal more intelligibly than her first attempt--and upon questioning, learned that she was well remembered. She heard herself called "the squaw who rides" by him, probably from the fact that she was the only white woman met by their hunters in the hills, though she had not imagined herself so well known by them as his words implied.

He of the bear-claws--their spokesman--mentioned Kalitan, giving her for the first time an idea of what had occurred. She turned at once to Captain Holt--not protesting, but interested--and learned all she wanted to.

"Kalitan does not like your southern scouts, for some reason," she said, "and I rather think it was his dignity rather than his loyalty that would suffer from having one of them a listener. Let them speak in my presence; I can understand them, and not arouse Kalitan's pride, either."

The Captain, nothing loath, accepted her guidance out of the dilemma, though it was only by a good deal of flattery on her part that Kalitan could at all forget his anger enough to speak to anyone.

The conversation was, after all, commonplace enough, as it was mostly a recital of his--Kalitan's--glories; for in the eyes of these provincials he posed as a warrior of travel and acc.u.mulated knowledge. The impa.s.sive faces of his listeners gave no sign as to whether they took him at his own valuation or not. Rachel now and then added a word, to keep from having too entirely the appearance of a listener, and she asked about Genesee.

The answer gave her to understand that weeks ago--five weeks--Genesee had been in their village; asked for a runner to go south to the Fort with talking-paper. Had bought pack-horse and provisions, and started alone to the northeast--may be Blackfoot Agency, they could not say; had seen him no more. Kalitan made some rapid estimate of probabilities that found voice in--

"Blackfoot--one hundred and twenty miles; go slow--Mowitza tired; long wau-wau (talk); come slow--snows high; come soon now, may be."

That was really the only bit of information in the entire "wau-wau"

that was of interest to the camp--information that Kalitan would have disdained to satisfy them with willingly; and even to Rachel, whom he knew was Genesee's friend, and his, he did not hint the distrust that had grown among the troops through that suspicious absence.

He would talk long and boastfully of his own affairs, but it was a habit that contrasted strangely with the stubborn silence by which he guarded the affairs of others.

"What is the matter back there?" asked Rachel, as she and Stuart started back to the ranch. "Ill-feeling?"

"Oh, I guess not much," he answered; "only they are growing careful of the Indians of late--afraid of them imposing on good nature, I suppose."

"A little good nature in Captain Holt would do him no harm with the Indians," she rejoined; "and he should know better than to treat Kalitan in that suspicious way. Major Dreyer would not do it, I feel sure, and Genesee won't like it."

"Will that matter much to the company or the command?"

He spoke thus only to arouse that combative spirit of hers; but she did not retort as usual--only said quietly:

"Yes, I think it would--they will find no man like him."

They never again referred to that conversation that had been in a way a confession on his part--the question of the woman at least was never renewed, though he told her much of vague plans that he hoped to develop, "when the time comes."

Three days after the visit of Bear-claws and his brethren, Stuart and Rachel were again at the camp; this time accompanying Miss Fred, who thought it was a good-enough day to go and see the "boys."

Surely it was a good-enough day for any use--clear and fresh overhead, white and sparkling underfoot, and just cold enough to make them think with desire of the cheery wood fires in the camp they were making for.

From above, a certain exhilaration was borne to them on the air, sifted through the cedars of the guardian hills; even the horses seemed enthused with the spirit of it, and joyously entered into a sort of a go-as-you-please race that brought them all laughing and breathless down the length of "the avenue," a strip of beaten path about twenty feet wide, along which the tents were pitched in two rows facing each other--and not very imposing looking rows, either.

There were greetings and calls right and left, as they went helter-skelter down the line; but there was no check of speed until they stopped, short, at the Major's domicile, that was only a little more distinguished on the outside than the rest, by having the colors whipping themselves into shreds from the flagstaff at the door.

It was too cold for ceremony; and throwing the bridles to an orderly, they made a dash for the door--Miss Fred leading.

"Engaged, is he?" she said good-humoredly to the man who stepped in her path. "I don't care if he is married. I don't intend to freeze on the place where his door-step ought to be. You tell him so."

The man on duty touched his cap and disappeared, and from the sound of the Major's laughter within, must have repeated the message verbatim, and a moment later returned.

"Major Dreyer says you may enter;" and then, laughing and shivering, the Major's daughter seized Rachel with one hand, Stuart with the other, and making a quick charge, darted into the ruling presence.

"Oh, you bear!" she said, breaking from her comrades and into the bear's embrace; "to keep us out there--and it so cold! And I came over specially for--"

And then she stopped. The glitter of the sun on the sun had made a glimmer of everything under a roof, and on her entrance she had not noticed a figure opposite her father, until a man rose to his feet and took a step forward as if to go.

"Let me know when you want me, Major," he said; and the voice startled those two m.u.f.fled figures in the background, for both, by a common impulse, started forward--Rachel throwing back the hood of her jacket and holding out her hand.

"I am glad you have come," she said heartily, and he gripped the offered member with a sort of fierceness as he replied:

"Thank you, Miss."

But his eyes were not on her. The man who had come with her--who still held her gloves in his hand--was the person who seemed to draw all his attention.