“Take me away from here, back to the Ferry—any place. Mrs. Huzzard will, maybe, come for a few days—or Miss Slocum. Ask them, and let me go soon.”
And an hour after they had started, another canoe went slowly over the water toward the Kootenai River, a canoe guided by Akkomi; and in it lay the blanket-draped figure of the man whose death was yet a mystery to the camp. He was at least borne to his resting place by a friend, though what the reason for Akkomi’s faithfulness, no one ever knew; for some favor in the past, no doubt. Seldon knew that ’Tana would rather Akkomi should be the one to cover his grave, though where it was made, no white man ever knew.
CHAPTER XXV.
ON MANHATTAN ISLAND.
“What do you intend to make of your life, Montana, since you avoid all questions of marriage? You will not go to school, and care nothing about fitting yourself for the society where by right you should belong.”
A whole winter had gone, and the springtime had come again; and over all the Island of Manhattan, and on the heights back from the rivers, the green of the leaves was creeping over the boughs from which winter had swept all signs of life months ago.
In a very lovely little room, facing a park where the glitter of a tiny lake could be seen, ’Tana lounged and stared at the waving branches and the fettered water.
Not just the same ’Tana as when, a year ago, she had breasted the cold waves of the Kootenai. No one, to look at her now, would connect the taller, stylishly dressed figure, with that little half-savage who had scowled at Overton in the lodge of Akkomi. Her hair was no longer short and boyish in its arrangement. A silver comb held it in place, except where the tiny curls crept down to cluster about her neck. A gown of soft white wool was caught at her waist by a flat woven belt of silver, and an embroidered shoe of silvery gleam peeped from under the white folds.