“Grudge? Not any. And you’re all right, Max. You will find thousands willing to keep to your idea of life, so we won’t split on that wedge. My old stepdad would chime in with you if he were here. He prates about civilization and Eastern culture till I get weary sometimes. Culture! Wait till you see him. He’s all right in his way, of course; but as I cut loose from home when only fifteen, and never ran across the old man again until two years ago—well, you see, I can make my estimates in that direction without being biased by family feeling. And I reckon he does the same thing. I don’t know what to expect when I go back this time; but, from signs around camp when I left, I wouldn’t be surprised if he presented me with a stepmother on my return.”
“A stepmother? Whew!” whistled the other. “Well, that shows there are some white women in your region, anyway.”
“Oh, yes, we have several. This particular one is a Pennsylvania product; talks through her nose, and eats with her knife, and will maybe try to make eyes at you and keep you in practice. But she is a good, square woman; simply one of the many specimens that drift out here. Came up from Helena with the ’boom,’ and started a milliner store—a milliner store in the bush, mind you! But after the Indians had bought all the bright feathers and artificial flowers, she changed her sign, and keeps an 25 eating-house now. It is the high-toned corner of the camp. She can cook some; and I reckon that’s what catches the old man.”
“Any more interesting specimens like that?”
“Not like that,” returned Overton; “but there are some more.”
Then he arose, and stood listening to sounds back in the wild forests.
“I hear the ’cayuse’ bell,” he remarked; “so the others are coming. We’ll go back up to the camp, and, after ’chuck,’ we’ll go over and give you a nearer view of the tribe on the other shore, if you want to add them to the list of your sight-seeing.”
“Certainly I do. They’ll be a relief after the squads of railroad section hands we’ve been having for company lately. They knocked all the romance out of the wildly beautiful country we’ve been coming through since we left the Columbia River.”
“Come back next year; then a boat will be puffing up here to the landing, and you can cross to the Columbia in a few hours, for the road will be completed then.”
“And you—will you be here then?”