“Last night? Oh, up above the bluff there—went up when the pretty red lights were in the sky, and staid until the moon rose. I came across her up there, and advised her not to range away alone; so, when she got good and ready, she walked back again, and went to the tent where you folks were. Then I struck the creek, decided I would take a run up the lake, and left without seeing any of you again. And all this time ’Tana has had a guard over her. Some of you must have been crazy.”
“Well, then, I guess I was the worst lunatic of the lot,” confessed Saunders. “But to tell the truth, Mr. Overton, it looks to me now as if she encouraged suspicion—yes, it does. ‘Overton’s knife,’ said some one; but, quick as could be, she spoke up and said it was she who had it, and she didn’t mind just where she left it. And as to where she was at that time, well, she just wouldn’t give us a bit of satisfaction. Blest if I don’t think she wanted us to suspect her.”
“Oh!” he breathed, as if in understanding, and her first words swept back to him, her nervous—“Why did you come back? They suspect me!” Surely that cry was as a plea for his own safety; it spoke through eyes and voice as well as words. Some glimmer of the truth came to him.
“Come, ’Tana!” he said, and reached his hand to her. “Where is the man—Holly? I should like to go in. Will you come, too?”
She rose without a word, and no one attempted to follow them.
Mrs. Huzzard heaved a prodigious sigh of content. 303
“Oh, that girl Montana!” she exclaimed. “I declare she ain’t like any girl I ever did see! This morning, when she was a suspected criminal, she was talky, and even laughed, and now that she’s cleared, she won’t lift her head to look at any one. I do wonder if that sort of queerness is catching in these woods. I declare I feel most scared enough to leave.”
But Lyster reassured her.
“Remember how sick she has been; and think what a shock this whole affair has been to weak nerves,” he said, for with Dan’s revelations he had grown blissfully content once more, “and as for that fellow hearing voices in her cabin—nonsense! She had been reading some poem or play aloud. She is fond of reading so, and does it remarkably well. He heard her spouting in there for the benefit of Harris, and imagined she was making threats to some one. Poor little girl! I’m determined she sha’n’t remain here any longer.”
“Are you?” asked Mrs. Huzzard, dryly. “Well, Mr. Max, so long as I’ve known her, I’ve always found ’Tana makes her own determinations—and sticks to them, too.”