LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter I.

       A Strange Girl

       Table of Contents

      “Well, by the help of either her red gods or devils, she can swim, anyway!”

      This explosive statement was made one June morning on the banks of the Kootenai, and the speaker, after a steady gaze, relinquished his field-glass to the man beside him.

      “Can she make it?” he asked.

      A grunt was the only reply given him. The silent watcher was too much interested in the scene across the water.

      Shouts came to them—the yells of frightened Indian children; and from the cone-shaped dwellings, up from the water, the Indian women were hurrying. One, reaching the shore first, sent up a shrill cry, as she perceived that, from the canoe where the children played, one had fallen over, and was being swept away by that swift-rushing, chill water, far out from the reaching hands of the others.

      Then a figure lolling on the shore farther down stream than the canoe sprang erect at the frightened scream.

      One quick glance showed the helplessness of those above, and another the struggling little form there in the water—the little one who turned such wild eyes toward the shore, and was the only one of them all who was not making some outcry.

      The white men, who were watching from the opposite side, could see shoes flung aside quickly; a jacket dropped on the shore; and then down into the water a slight figure darted with the swiftness of a kingfisher, and swam out to the little fellow who had struggled to keep his head above water, but was fast growing helpless in the chill of the mountain river.

      Then it was that Mr. Maxwell Lyster commented on the physical help lent by the gods of the red people, as the ability of any female to swim thus lustily in spite of that icy current seemed to his civilized understanding a thing superhuman. Of course, bears and other animals of the woods swam it at all seasons, when it was open; but to see a woman dash into it like that! Well, it sent a shiver over him to think of it.

      “They’ll both get chilled and drop to the bottom!” he remarked, with irritated concern. “Of course there are enough of the red vagabonds in this new El Dorado of yours, without that particular squaw. But it would be a pity that so plucky a one should be translated.”

      Then a yell of triumph came from the other shore. A canoe had been loosened, and was fairly flying over the water to where the child had been dragged to the surface, and the rescuer was holding herself up by the slow efforts of one arm, but could make no progress with her burden.

      “That’s no squaw!” commented the other man, who had been looking through the glass.

      “Why, Dan!”

      “It’s no squaw, I tell you,” insisted the other, with the superior knowledge of a native. “Thought so the minute I saw her drop the shoes and jacket that way. She didn’t make a single Indian move. It’s a white woman!”

      “Queer place for a white woman, isn’t it?”

      The man called Dan did not answer. The canoe had reached that figure in the water and the squaw in it lifted the now senseless child and laid him in the bottom of the light craft.

      A slight altercation seemed going on between the woman in the water and the one in the boat. The former was protesting against being helped on board—the men could see that by their gestures. She finally gained her point, for the squaw seized the paddle and sent the boat shoreward with all the strength of her brown arms, while the one in the water held on to the canoe and was thus towed back, where half the Indian village had now swarmed to receive them.

      “She’s got sand and sense,” and Dan nodded his appreciation of the towing process; “for, chilled as she must be, the canoe would more than likely have turned over if she had tried to climb into it. Look at the pow-wow they are kicking up! That little red devil must count for big stakes with them.”

      “But the woman who swam after him. See! they try to stand her on her feet, but she can’t walk. There! she’s on the ground again. I’d give half my supper to know if she has killed herself with that ice-bath.”

      “Maybe you can eat all your supper and find out, too,” observed the other, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a quizzical glance at his companion, “unless even the glimpse of a petticoat has chased away your appetite. You had better take some advice from an old man, Max, and swear off approaching females in this country, for the specimens you’ll find here aren’t things to make you proud they’re human.”

      “An old man!” repeated Mr. Lyster with a smile of derision. “You must be pretty near twenty-eight years old—aren’t you, Dan? and just about five years older than myself. And what airs you do assume in consequence! With all the weight of those years,” he added, slowly, “I doubt, Mr. Dan Overton, if you have really lived as much as I have.”

      One glance of the dark eyes was turned on the speaker for an instant, and then the old felt hat again shaded them as he continued watching the group on the far shore. The swimmer had been picked up by a stalwart Indian woman, and was carried bodily up to one of the lodges, while another squaw—evidently the mother—carried the little redskin who had caused all the commotion.

      “I suppose, by living, you mean the life of settlements—or, to condense the question still more, the life of cities,” continued Overton, stretching himself lazily on the bank. “You mean the life of a certain set in one certain city—New York, for instance,” and he grinned at the expression of impatience on the face of the other. “Yes, I reckon New York is about the one, and a certain part of the town to live in. A certain gang of partners, who have a certain man to make their clothes and boots and hats, and stamp his name on the inside of them, so that other folks can see, when you take off your coat, or your hat, or your gloves, that they were made at just the right place. This makes you a man worth knowing—isn’t that about the idea? And in the afternoon, at just about the right hour, you rig yourself out in a certain cut of coat, and stroll for an hour or so on a certain street! In the evening—if a man wants to understand just what it is to live—he must get into other clothes and drop into the theater, making a point of being introduced to any heavy swell within reach, so you can speak of it afterward, you know. Just as your chums like to say they had a supper with a pretty actress, after the curtain went down; but they don’t go into details, and own up that the ’actress’ maybe never did anything on a stage but walk on in armor and carry a banner. Oh, scowl if you want to! Of course it sounds shoddy when a trapper outlines it; but it doesn’t seem shoddy to the people who live like that. Then, about the time that all good girls are asleep, it is just the hour for a supper to be ordered, at just the right place for the wine to be good, and the dishes served in A1 shape, with a convenient waiter who knows how dim to make the lights, and how to efface himself, and let you wait on your ’lady’ with your own hands. And she’ll go home wearing a ring of yours—two, if you have them; and you’ll wake up at noon next day, and think what a jolly time you had, but with your head so muddled that you can’t remember where it was you were to meet her the next night, or whether it was the next night that her husband was to be home, and she couldn’t see you at all.”

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