“I’m going back to camp.”
“Now, I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” he asked, in surprise. “Really, I did not mean to. Won’t you forgive me?”
She dug her heel in the sand and did not answer; but the fact that she remained at all assured him she would relent. He was amused at her quick show of temper. What a prospect for Dan!
“I scarcely know what I said to vex you,” he began; but she flashed a sullen look at him.
“You think I’m odd – and – and a nobody; just because I ain’t like fine young ladies you know somewheres – like Miss Margaret Haydon,” and she dug the sand away with vicious little kicks. “Nice ladies with kid slippers on,” she added, derisively, “the sort that always falls in love with the pretty man, the hero. Huh! I’ve seen some men who were heroes – real ones – and I never saw a pretty one yet.”
As she said it, she looked very straight into the very handsome face of Mr. Lyster.
“A young Tartar!” he decided, mentally, while he actually colored at the directness of her gaze and her sweepingly contemptuous opinion of “pretty men.”
“I see I’d better vacate your premises since you appear unwilling to forgive me even my unintentional faults,” he decided, meekly. “I’m very sorry, I’m sure, and hope you will bear no malice. Of course I – nobody would want you to be different from what you are; so you must not think I meant that. I had hoped you would let me buy that clay bust as a memento of this morning, but I’m afraid to ask favors now. I can only hope that you will speak to me again to-morrow. Until then, good-by.”
She raised her eyes sullenly at first, but they dropped, ashamed, before the kindness of his own. She felt coarse and clumsy, and wished she had not been so quick to quarrel. And he was turning away! Maybe he would never speak nicely to her again, and she loved to hear him speak.
Then her hand was thrust out to him, and in it was the little clay model.
“You can have it. I’ll give it to you,” she said, quite humbly. “It ain’t very pretty, but if you like it – ”
Thus ended the first of many differences between Dan’s ward and Dan’s friend.
When Daniel Overton himself came stalking down among the Indian children, looking right and left from under his great slouch hat, he halted suddenly, and with his lips closed somewhat grimly, stood there watching the rather pretty picture before him.
But the prettiness of it did not seem to appeal to him strongly. He looked on the girl’s half smiling, drooped face, on Lyster, who held the model and his hat in one hand and, with his handsome blonde head bared, held out his other hand to her, saying something in those low, deferential tones Dan knew so well.
Her hand was given after a little hesitation. When they beheld Dan so near them, the hands were unclasped and each looked confused.
Mr. Lyster was the first to recover, and adjusting his head covering once more, he held up the clay model to view.
“Thought you’d be around before long,” he remarked, with a provoking gleam in his eyes. “I really had no hope of meeting Miss Rivers before you this morning; but fortune favors the brave, you know, and fortune sent me right along these sands for my morning walk – a most indulgent fortune, for, look at this! Did you know your ward is an embryo sculptress?”
The older man looked indifferently enough at the exalted bit of clay.
“I leave discoveries of that sort to you. They seem to run in your line more than mine,” he answered, briefly. Then he turned to the girl. “Akkomi told me you were here with the children, ’Tana. If you had other company, Akkomi would have made him welcome.”
He did not speak unkindly, yet she felt that in some way he was not pleased; and perhaps – perhaps he would change his mind and leave her where he found her! And if so, she might never see – either of their faces again! As the thought came to her, she looked up at Dan in a startled way, and half put out her hand.
“I – I did not know. I don’t like the lodges. It is better here by the river. It is your friend that came, and I – ”
“Certainly. You need not explain. And as you seem to know each other, I need not do any introducing,” he answered, as she seemed to grow confused. “But I have a little time to talk to you this morning and so came early.”
“Which means that I can set sail for the far shore,” added Lyster, amiably. “All right; I’m gone. Good-by till to-morrow, Miss Rivers. I’m grateful for the clay Indian, and more grateful that you have agreed to be friends with me again. Will you believe, Dan, that in our short acquaintance of half an hour, we have had time for one quarrel and ’make up’? It is true. And now that she is disposed to accept me as a traveling companion, don’t you spoil it by giving me a bad name when my back is turned. I’ll wait at the canoes.”
With a wave of his hat, he passed out of sight around the clump of bushes, and down along the shore, singing cheerily, and the words floated back to them:
“Come, love! come, love!
My boat lies low;
She lies high and dry
On the Ohio.”
Overton stood looking at the girl for a little time after Lyster disappeared. His eyes were very steady and searching, as though he began to realize the care a ward might be, especially when the antecedents and past life of the ward were so much of stubborn mystery to him.
“I wonder,” he said, at last, “if there is any chance of your being my friend, too, in so short a time as a half-hour? Oh, well, never mind,” he added, as he saw the red mouth tremble, and tears show in her eyes as she looked at him. “Only don’t commence by disliking, that’s all; for unfriendliness is a bad thing in a household, let alone in a canoe, and I can be of more downright use to you, if you give me all the confidence you can.”
“I know what you mean – that I must tell you about – about how I came here, and all; but I won’t!” she burst out. “I’ll die here before I do! I hated the people they said were my people. I was glad when they were dead – glad – glad! Oh, you’ll say it’s wicked to think that way about relatives. Maybe it is, but it’s natural if they’ve always been wicked to you. I’ll go to the bad place, I reckon, for feeling this way, and I’ll just have to go, for I can’t feel any other way.”
“’Tana —’Tana!” and his hand fell on her shoulder, as though to shake her away from so wild a mood. “You are only a girl yet. When you are older, you will be ashamed to say you ever hated your parents – whoever they were – your mother!”
“I ain’t saying anything about her,” she answered bitterly. “She died before I can mind. I’ve been told she was a lady. But I won’t ever use the name again she used. I – I want to start square with the world, if I leave these Indians, and I can’t do it unless I change my name and try to forget the old one. It has a curse on it – it has.”
She was trembling with nervousness, and her eyes, though tearless, were stormy and rebellious.
“You’ll think I’m bad, because I talk this way,” she continued, “but I ain’t – I ain’t. I’ve fought when I had to, and – and I’d swear – sometimes; but that’s all the bad I ever did do. I won’t any more if you take me with you. I – I can cook and keep house for you, if you hain’t got folks of your own, and – I do want to go with you.”
“Come, love! come!
Won’t you go along with me?
And I’ll take you back
To old Tennessee!”
The words of the handsome singer came clearly back to them. Overton, about to speak, heard the words of the song, and a little smile, half-bitter, half-sad, touched his lips as he looked at her.
“I