"What are you trading for?" asked Lyster, and looked like protesting, when Overton answered:
"An audience with Akkomi."
"Great Csar! is one of that sort not enough? I'll never feel that my hand is clean again until I can give it a bath with some sort of disinfectant stuff. Now there's another one to greet! I'll not be able to eat fish again for a year. Why didn't luck send the old vagabond hunting with the rest? I can endure the women, for they don't sprawl around you and shake hands with you. Just tell me what I'm to donate for being allowed to bask in the light of Akkomi's countenance? Haven't a thing over here but some cigars."
Overton only laughed silently, and gave more attention to the lodge of Akkomi than to his companion's disgust. When Black Bow emerged from the tent, he watched him sharply as he approached, to learn from the Indian's countenance, if possible, the result of the message.
"If he sends a royal request that we partake of supper, I warn you, I shall be violently and immediately taken ill--too ill to eat," whispered Lyster, meaningly.
Black Bow seated himself, filled his pipe, handed it to a squaw to light, and then sent several puffs of smoke skyward, ere he said:
"Akkomi is old, and the time for his rest has come. He says the door of his lodge is open--that Dan may go within and speak what there is to say. But the stranger--he must wait till the day comes again."
"Snubbed me, by George!" laughed Lyster. "Well, am I then to wait outside the portals, and be content with the crumbs you choose to carry out to me?"
"Oh, amuse yourself," returned Overton, carelessly, and was on his feet at once. "I leave you to the enjoyment of Black Bow."
A moment later he reached the lodge of the old chief and, without ceremony, walked in to the center of it.
A slight fire was there,--just enough to kill the dampness of the river's edge, and over it the old squaw of Akkomi bent, raking the dry sticks, until the flames fluttered upward and outlined the form of the chief, coiled on a pile of skins and blankets against the wall.
He nodded a welcome, said "Klehowyeh," and motioned with his pipe that his visitor should be seated on another pile of clothing and bedding, near his own person.
Then it was that Overton discovered a fourth person in the shadows opposite him--the white woman he had been curious about.
And it was not a woman at all,--only a girl of perhaps sixteen years instead--who shrank back into the gloom, and frowned on him with great, dark, unchildlike eyes, and from under brows wide and straight as those of a sculptor's model for a young Greek god; for, if any beauty of feature was hers, it was boyish in its character. As for beauty of expression, she assuredly did not cultivate that. The curved red mouth was sullen and the eyes antagonistic.
One sharp glance showed Overton all this, and also that there was no Indian blood back of the rather pale cheek.
"So you got out of the water alive, did you?" he asked, in a matter of fact way, as though the dip in the river was a usual thing to see.
She raised her eyes and lowered them again with a sort of insolence, as though to show her resentment of the fact that he addressed her at all.
"I rather guess I'm alive," she answered, curtly, and the visitor turned to the chief.
"I saw to-day your child's child in the waters of the Kootenai. I saw the white friend lifting him up out of the river, and fighting with death for him. It would have been a good thing for a man to do, Akkomi. I crossed the water to-night, to see if your boy is well once more, or if there is any way I can do service for the young white squaw who is your friend."
The old Indian smoked in silence for a full minute. He was a sharp-eyed, shrewd-faced old fellow. When he spoke, it was in the Chinook jargon, and with a significant nod toward the girl, as though she was not to hear or understand his words.
"It is true, the son of my daughter is again alive. The breath was gone when the young squaw reached him, but she was in time. Dan know the young squaw, maybe?"
"No, Akkomi. Who?"
The old fellow shook his head, as if not inclined to give the information required.
"She tell white men if she want white men to know," he observed. "The heart of Akkomi is heavy for her--heavy. A lone trail is a hard one for a squaw in the Kootenai land--a white squaw who is young. She rests here, and may eat of our meat all her days if she will."
Overton glanced again at the girl, who was evidently, from the words of the chief, following some lone trail through the wilderness,--a trail starting whence, and leading whither? All that he could read was that no happiness kept her company.
"But the life of a red squaw in the white men's camps is a bad life," resumed the old man, after a season of deliberation; "and the life of the white squaw in the red man's village is bad as well."
Overton nodded gravely, but said nothing. By the manner of Akkomi, he perceived that some important thought was stirring in the old man's mind, and that it would develop into speech all the sooner if not hurried.
"Of all the men of the white camps it is you Akkomi is gladdest to talk to this day," continued the chief, after another season of silence; "for you, Dan, talk with a tongue that is straight, and you go many times where the great towns are built."
"The words of Akkomi are true words," assented Overton, "and my ears listen to hear what he will say."
"Where the white men live is where this young white squaw should live," said Akkomi, and the listening squaw of Akkomi grunted assent. It was easy to read that she looked with little favor on the strange white girl within their lodge. To be sure, Akkomi was growing old; but the wife of Akkomi had memories of his lusty youth and of various wars she had been forced to wage on ambitious squaws who fancied it would be well to dwell in the lodge of the head chief.
And remembering those days, though so long past, the old squaw was sorely averse to the adoption dance for the white girl who lay on their blankets, and thought it good, indeed, that she go to live in the villages of the white people.
Overton nodded gravely.
"You speak wisely, Akkomi," he said.
Glancing at the girl, Dan noted that she was leaning forward and gazing at him intently. Her face gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she perhaps knew what they were talking of, but she dropped back into the shadows again, and he dismissed the idea as improbable, for white girls were seldom versed in the lore of Indian jargon.
He waited a bit for Akkomi to continue, but as that dignitary evidently thought he had said enough, if Overton chose to interpret it correctly, the white man asked:
"Would it please Akkomi that I, Dan, should lead the young squaw where white families are?"
"Yes. It is that I thought of when I heard your name. I am old. I cannot take her. She has come a long way on a trail for that which has not been found, and her heart is so heavy she does not care where the next trail leads her. So it seems to Akkomi. But she saved the son of my daughter, and I would wish good to her. So, if she is willing, I would have her go to your people."
"If she is willing!" Overton doubted it, and thought of the scowl with which she had answered him before. After a little hesitation, he said: "It shall be as you wish. I am very busy now, but to serve one who is your friend I will take time for a few days. Do you know the girl?"
"I know her, and her father before her. It was long ago, but my eyes are good. I remember. She is good--girl not afraid."
"Father! Where is her father?"
"In the grave blankets--so she tells me."
"And her name--what is she called?"
But Akkomi was not to be stripped of all his knowledge by questions. He puffed at the pipe in silence and then, as Overton was as persistently quiet as himself, he