The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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Then he whistled to a man down below him, and the man came and helped him down to camp, for his feet had grown helpless again in that strange chill of which he had spoken.
Mrs. Huzzard met him at the door of a sitting room, gorgeous as an apartment could well be in the Northern wilderness. All the luxuries obtainable were there; for, as Harris had to live so much of his time indoors, Overton seemed determined that he should get benefit from his new fortune in some way. The finest of furs and of weavings furnished the room, and a dainty little stand held a tea service of shell-pink china, from which the steam floated cheerily.
And Lorena Jane herself partook of the general air of prosperity, as she drew forward a great cushioned chair for the invalid and brought him a cup of fragrant tea.
"I just knew you was tired the minute I saw you coming down that hill," she said, filling a cup herself and sitting down to enjoy it. "I knew a cup of tea would do you good, for you ain't quite so brisk as you was a few weeks ago."
"No," he agreed, and gulped down the beverage with a dubious expression on his face. He very much preferred whisky as a tonic; but as Mrs. Huzzard was bound to use that new tea service every day for his benefit, he submitted without a protest and enjoyed most the number of cups she disposed of.
"I suppose, now, you got sight from up there on the hill of the two young folks going boat riding?" she remarked, with attempted indifference; and he looked at her questioningly.
"Oh, I mean Lavina and the captain! Yes, he did get up ambition enough to paddle a boat and ask her to ride in it; and away they went, giddy as you please!"
"I thought you had a high regard for the captain?" remarked Harris.
"Who? Me? Well, as Mr. Overton's relation, of course I show him respect," and her tone was almost as pompous as that of the captain used to be. "But I must say, sir, that to admire a man--for me to admire a man--he must have a certain lot of push and ambition. He must be a real American, who don't depend on the record of his dead relations to tell you how great he is--a man who will dig either gold or potatoes if he needs them, and not be afraid of spoiling his hands."
"Somebody like this new lucky man, McCoy," suggested Harris, and she smiled complacently but did not answer.
And out on the little creek, sure enough, Lavina and the captain were gliding with the current, and the current had got them into dangerous waters.
"And you won't say yes, Lavina?" he asked, and she tapped her foot impatiently on the bottom of the boat.
"I told you yes twenty-five years ago, Alf Leek," she answered.
He sighed helplessly. His old aggressive manner was all gone. The tactics he would adopt for any other woman were useless with this one. She knew him like a book. She had him completely cowed and miserable. No longer did he regale admiring friends with tales of the late war, and incidentally allow himself to be thought a hero. One look from Lavina would freeze the story of the hottest battle that ever was fought.
To be sure, she had as yet refrained from using words against him; but how long would she refrain? That question he had asked himself until, in despair, a loop-hole from her quiet vengeance had occurred to him, and he had asked her to marry him.
"You never could--would marry any one else," he said, pleadingly.
"Oh, couldn't I?"
"And I couldn't, either, Lavina," he continued, looking at her sentimentally. But Lavina knew better.
"You would, if anybody would have you," she retorted. "I know I reached here just in time to keep poor Lorena Jane from being made a victim of. You would have been a tyrant over her, with your great pretensions, if I hadn't stopped it. You always were tyrannical, Alf Leek; and the only time you're humble as you ought to be is when you meet some one who can tyrannize over you. You are one of the sort that needs it."
"That's why I asked you to marry me," he remarked, meekly.
And after a moment she said:
"Well, thinking of it from that point of view, I guess I will."
Far up on the heights, a man lying there alone saw the canoe with the man and the woman in it, and it brought back to him keen rushes of memory from the summer time that had been. It was only a year ago that 'Tana had stepped into his canoe, and gone with him to the new life of the settlement. How brave she had been! how daring! He liked best to remember her as she had been then, with all the storms and sunshine of her face. He liked to remember that she had said she would be cook for him, but for no other man. Of course her words were a child's words, soon forgotten by her. But all her words and looks and their journeys made him love the land he had known her in. They were all the treasures he had with which to comfort his loneliness.
And when in the twilight he descended to the camp, Joe--or his own longings--had won.
"I will send the telegram for you, old fellow," he said, and that was all.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
AGAIN ON THE KOOTENAI.
Another canoe, with a woman in it, skimmed over the waters in the twilight that evening--a woman with all the gladness of youth in her bright eyes, and an eagerness for the north country that far outstripped the speed of the boat.
Each dark tree-trunk as it loomed up from the shores, each glint of the after-glow as it lighted the ripples, each whisper of the fresh, soft wind of the mountains, was to her as a special welcome. All of them touched her with the sense of a friendship that had been faithful. That she was no more to them than any of the strangers who came and went on the current, she could not believe; for they all meant so much, so very much to her.
She asked for a paddle, that she might once more feel against her strength the strong rush of the mountain river. She caressed its waves and reached out her hands to the bending boughs, and laughter and sighs touched her lips.
"Never again!" she whispered, as if a promise was being made; "never again! my wilderness!"
The man who had charge of the canoe--a stalwart, red-whiskered man of perhaps forty-five--looked at her a good deal in a cautious way. She was so unlike any of the girls he had ever seen--so gay, so free of speech with each stranger or Indian who came their way; so daintily garbed in a very correct creation of some city tailor; and, above all, so tenderly careful of a child who slept among the rugs at her feet, and looked like a bit of pink blossom against the dark furs.
"You are a stranger here, aren't you?" she asked the man. "I saw no one like you running a boat here last summer."
"No, no," he said, slowly; "I didn't then. My camp is east of Bonner's Ferry, quite a ways; but I get around here sometimes, too. I don't run a boat only for myself; but when they told me a lady wanted to get to Twin Springs, I didn't allow no scrub Indians to take her if my boat was good enough."
"It is a lovely boat," she said, admiringly; "the prettiest I ever saw on this river, and it is very good of you to bring me yourself. That is one of the things makes me realize I am in the West once more--to be helped simply because I am a girl alone. And you didn't even know my name when you offered to bring me."
"No, but I did before I left shore," he answered; "and then I counted myself kind of lucky. I--I've heard so much about you, miss, from folks up at Twin Springs; from one lady there in particular--Mrs. Huzzard."
"Oh! so you know her, do you?" she asked, and wondered at the self-conscious look with which he owned up that he did--a little.
"A little? Oh, that is not nearly enough," she said, good-naturedly. "Lorena Jane is worth knowing a good deal of."
"That's my opinion, too," he agreed; "but a fellow needs some help sometimes, if he ain't over handy with the gift of gab."
"Well, now, I should not think you would need much help," she answered. "You ought to be the sort she would make friends with quick enough."
"Oh, yes--friends," he said, and sent the canoe on with swifter, stronger strokes. The other boat, paddled by Indians and carrying baggage, was left far behind.