The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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talk to me, only say, 'Take care 'Tana,' that all."
The girl asked no more, but lay there on her couch, filled with dry moss and covered with skins of the mountain wolf. Her eyes closed as though she were asleep; but the squaw knew better, and after a little, she said doubtfully:
"Maybe Akkomi know."
"Akkomi!" and the eyes opened wide and slant. "That is so. I should have remembered. But oh, all the thoughts in my brain have been so muddled. You have heard something, then? Tell me."
"Not much--only little," answered the squaw. "That night--late that night, a white stranger reached Akkomi's tent, to sleep. No one else of the tribe got to see him, so the word is. Kawaka heard on the river, and it was that night."
"And then? Where did the stranger go?"
The squaw shook her head.
"Me not know. Kawaka not hear. But I thought of the track. Now many white men make tracks, and one no matter."
"Akkomi," and the thoughts of the girl went back to the very first she could remember of her recovery; and always, each day, the face of Akkomi had been near her. He had not talked, but would look at her a little while with his sharp, bead-like eyes, and then betake himself to the sunshine outside her door, where he would smoke placidly for hours and watch the restless Anglo-Saxon in his struggle to make the earth yield up its riches.
Each day Akkomi had been there, and she had not once aroused herself to question why; but she would.
Rising, she passed out and looked right and left; but no blanketed brave met her gaze. Only Kawaka, the husband of Flap-Jacks, worked about the canoes by the water. Then she entered Harris' cabin, where the sight of his helpless form, and his welcoming smile, made her halt, and drop down on the rug beside him. She had forgotten him so much of late, and she touched his hand remorsefully.
"I feel as if I had just got awake, Joe," she said, and stretched out her arms, as though to drive away the last vestige of sleep. "Do you know how that feels? To lie for days, stupid as a chilled snake, and then, all at once, to feel the sun creeping around where you are and warming you until you begin to wonder how you could have slept so many days away. Well, just now I feel almost well again. I did not think I would get well; I did not care. All the days I lay in there I wished they would just let me be, and throw their medicines in the creek. I think, Joe, that there are times when people should be allowed to die, when they grow tired--tired away down in their hearts; so tired that they don't want to take up the old tussle of living again. It is so much easier to die then than when a person is happy, and--and has some one to like them, and--"
She left the sentence unfinished, but he nodded a perfect understanding of her thoughts.
"Yes, you have felt like that, too, I suppose," she continued, after a little. "But now, Joe, they tell me we are rich--you and Dan and I--so rich we ought to be happy, all of us. Are we?"
He only smiled at her, and glanced at the cozy furnishing of his rude cabin. Like 'Tana's, it had been given a complete going over by Overton, and rugs and robes did much to soften its crude wood-work. It had all the luxury obtainable in that district, though even yet the doors were but heavy skins.
She noticed the look but shook her head.
"Thick rugs and soft pillows don't make troubles lighter," she said, with conviction; and then: "Maybe Dan is happy. He--he must be. All he thinks of now is the gold ore."
She spoke so wistfully, and her own eyes looked so far, far from happy, that the face of the man was filled with longing to comfort her--the little girl who had tramped so long on a lone trail--how lonely none knew so well as he. His fingers closed and unclosed, as if with the desire to clasp her hand,--to make some visible show of friendship.
She saw the slight movement, and looked up at him with a new interest.
"Oh, I forgot, Joe! I never once have asked how you have got along while I have been so sick. Can you use your hands any at all? You could once, a little bit that day--the day we found the gold."
But he shook his head, and just then a step was heard outside, and Lyster looked in.
A shade of surprise touched his face, as he saw 'Tana there, with so bright an expression in her eyes.
"What has Harris been telling you that has aroused you to interest, Tana?" he asked, jestingly. "He has more influence than I, for I have scarcely been able to get you to talk at all."
"You don't need me; you have Miss Slocum," she answered. "Have you dropped her in the creek and run back to camp? And have you seen Akkomi lately? I want him."
"Of course you do. The moment I make my appearance, you want to get rid of me by sending me for some other man. No, I am happy to say I have not seen that royal loafer for the past hour. And I am more happy still to find that you really want some one--any one--once more. Do you realize, my dear girl, how very many days it is since you have condescended to want anything on this earth of ours? Won't you accept me as a substitute for Akkomi?"
"I don't want you."
But her eyes smiled on him kindly, and he did not believe her.
"Perhaps not; but won't you pretend you do for a little while, long enough to come with me for a little walk--or else to talk to me in your cabin?"
"To talk to you? I don't think I can talk much to any one yet. I just told Joe I feel as if I was only waking up."
"So I see; that is the reason I am asking an audience. I will do the talking, and it need not be a very long talk, if you are too tired."
"I believe I will go," she said, at last. "I was thinking it would be nice to float in a canoe again--just to float lazy on the current. Can't we do that?"
"Nothing easier," he answered, entirely delighted that she was again more like the 'Tana of two months before. She seemed to him a little paler and a little taller, but as they walked together to the canoe, he felt that they would again come to the old chummy days of Sinna Ferry, when they quarreled and made up as regularly as the sun rose and set.
"Well, why don't you talk?" she asked, as their little craft drifted away from the tents and the man who washed the soil by the spring run. "What did you do with the women folks?"
"Gave them to Overton. They concluded not to risk their precious selves with me, when they discovered that he, for a wonder, was disengaged. Really and truly, that angular schoolmistress will make herself Mrs. Overton if he is not careful. She flatters him enough to spoil an average man; looks at him with so much respectful awe, you know, though she never does say much to him."
"Saves her breath to drill Mrs. Huzzard with," observed the girl, dryly. "That poor, dear woman has a bee in her muddled old head, and the bee is Captain Leek and his fine manners. I can see it, plain as day. Bless her heart! I hear her go over and over words that she always used to say wrong, and she does eat nicer than she used to. Humph! I wonder if Dan Overton will take as kindly to being taught, when the school-teacher begins with him."
There was a mirthless, unlovely smile about her lips, and Lyster reached over and clasped her hand coaxingly.
"'Tana, what has changed you so?" he asked. "Is it your sickness--is it the gold--or what, that makes you turn from your old friends? Dan never says a word, but I notice it. You never talk to him, and he has almost quit going to your cabin at all, though he would do anything for you, I know. My dear, you will find few friends like him in the world."
"Oh, don't--don't bother me about him," she answered, irritably. "He is all right, of course. But I--"
Then she stopped, and with a determined air turned the subject.
"You said you had something to talk to me about. What was it?"
"You don't know how glad I am to hear you speak as you used to," he said, looking at her kindly. "I would be rejoiced even to get a scolding from you these days. But that was not exactly what I brought you out to tell you, either," and he drew from his pocket the letter he had carried for three weeks, waiting until she appeared strong enough to accept surprises.