That Girl Montana

by Marah Ellis Ryan

As the dusk fell, Lyster fully appreciated the picturesque qualities of the scene before him. The many dogs and their friendly attentions disturbed him somewhat, but he sat there feeling much as if in a theater; for those barbarians, in their groupings, reminded him of bits of stage setting he had seen at some time or another.

One big fire was outside the lodges, and over it a big kettle hung, and the steam drifted up and over the squaws and children gathered there. Some of them came over and looked at him, and several grunted at Overton. Black Bow would order them away once in a while with a lordly “Klehowyeh,” much as he did the dogs; and, like the dogs, they would promptly return, and gaze with half-veiled eyes at the elegance of the high boots covering the shapely limbs of Mr. Lyster.

The men were away on a hunt, Black Bow explained; only he and Akkomi, the head chief, had not gone. Akkomi was growing very old and no longer led the hunts; therefore a young chief must ever be near to his call; so Black Bow was also absent from the hunt.

“We stay until two suns rise,” and Overton pointed across to the camp of the whites. “To-morrow I would ask that Black Bow and the chief Akkomi eat at our table. This is the kinsman—tillicums—of the men who make the great work where the mines are and the boats that are big and the cars that go faster than the horses run. He wants that the two great chiefs of the 33 Kootenais eat of his food before he goes back again to the towns of the white people.”

Lyster barely repressed a groan as he heard the proposal made, but Overton was blandly oblivious of the appealing expression of his friend; the thing he was interested in was to bring Black Bow to a communicative mood, for not a sign could he discover of a white woman in the camp, though he was convinced there was or had been one there.

The invitation to eat succeeded. Black Bow would tell the old chief of their visit; maybe he would talk with them now, but he was not sure. The chief was tired, his thoughts had been troubled that day. The son of his daughter had been near death in the river there. He was only a child, and could not swim yet; a young squaw of the white people had kept him from drowning, and the squaw of Akkomi had been making medicines for her ever since.

“Young squaw! Where comes a white squaw from to the Kootenai lakes?” asked Overton, incredulously. “Half white, half red, maybe.”

“White,” affirmed their host. “Where? Humph! Where come the sea-birds from that get lost when they fly too far from shore? Kootenai not know, but they drop down sometimes by the rivers. So this one has come. She has talked with Akkomi; but he tell nothing; only maybe we will all dance a dance some day, and then she will be Kootenai, too.”

“Adopt her,” muttered Overton, and glanced at Lyster; but that gentleman’s attention was given at the moment to a couple of squaws who walked past and looked at him out of the corners of their eyes, so he 34 missed that portion of Black Bow’s figurative information.

“I have need to see the chief Akkomi,” said Overton, after a moment’s thought. “It would be well if I could see him before sleeping. Of these,” producing two colored handkerchiefs, “will you give one to him, that he may know I am in earnest, the other will you not wear for Dan?”