“Like her, madame! A girl who plays poker, and—and—”
“And wins,” added Mrs. Huzzard, with a twinkle in her eyes. “Ah, now, didn’t Mr. Max tell me the whole story! She is a clip, and I know it; but I think she only meant that game as a bit of a joke.”
“A twenty-dollar joke, Mrs. Huzzard, is too expensive to be funny,” growled the captain, with natural discontent. “But if I could only convince myself that the money was honestly won, I would not feel so annoyed over it; but I can’t—no, madame. I am confident there was a trick in that game—some gambler’s trick she has picked up among her promiscuous acquaintances. And I am annoyed—more than ever annoyed now that there is a 140 chance of her remaining longer under Dan’s care. She’s a dangerous protégée for a boy of his age, that’s all.”
“Dangerous! Oh, now, I’ve my doubts of that,” said Mrs. Huzzard, shaking her head, emphatically. “You take my word for it, if she’s dangerous as a girl to any one in this camp, it’s not Mr. Dan’s peace of mind she’s disturbing, but that of his new friend.”
“You mean Lyster? Ridiculous! A gentleman of culture, used to the best society, give a thought to such an unclassed individual? No, madame!—don’t you believe it. His interest about the school affair was doubtless to get her away from camp, and to keep her from being a responsibility on Dan’s hands.”
“Hum! maybe. But, from all the dances he danced with her, and the way he waited on her, I’d a notion that he did not think her a great responsibility at all.”
This conversation occurred the morning after those letters had been read. The owner of them was installed in the best room Mrs. Huzzard had to offer, and miners from all sections were cordially invited to visit the paralyzed man, in the vain hope that some one would chance to remember his face, or help establish the lost miner’s identity; for he seemed utterly lost from all record of his past—all but that he had loved a girl whom an unknown partner had stolen. And Overton remembered that he seemed especially interested in the whereabouts of the renegade, Lee Holly.
The unknown Lee Holly’s name had suddenly attained the importance of a gruesome ghost to Overton. He had stared gloomily at the paralytic, as though striving to glean from the living eyes the secrets held close by the silenced lips. ’Tana and Monte and Lee Holly!—his little girl and those renegades! Surely these persons 141 could have nothing to do with each other. Harris was looney—so Overton decided as he stalked back and forth beside the house, glancing up once in a while to a window above him—a window where he hoped to see ’Tana’s face; for all one day had gone, and the evening come again, yet he had never seen her since he had lifted her unconscious form from beside the chair of Harris. Her words, “I know now! Joe—Joe Hammond!” were yet whispering through his senses. Did those words mean anything? or was the child simply overwrought by that tragedy told in the letters? He did not imagine she would comprehend all the sadness of it until she had fallen in that faint.
The night he had talked with her first in Akkomi’s tepee, and afterward in the morning by the river, he had promised to be satisfied with what she chose to tell him of herself, and ask no questions of her past. But since the insinuations of Harris and her own peculiar words and manner, he discovered that the promise was not easy to keep—especially when Lyster besieged him with questions; for ’Tana had spent the day utterly alone, but for the ministrations of Mrs. Huzzard. She would not see even the doctor, as she said she was not sick. She would not see Overton, Lyster, or any one else, because she said she did not want to talk; she was tired, and that reason must suffice. It did for Lyster, especially after he had received a nod, a smile, and a wave of her hand from her window—a circumstance he related hopefully to Overton, as it banished the lingering fear in his mind that her exile was one caused by absolute illness.
“I candidly believe, Dan, that she is simply ashamed of having fainted before us last evening—fancies it looks weak, I suppose; and she does pride herself so on her 142 ungirlish strength. I’ve no doubt she will emerge from her seclusion to-morrow morning, and expect us to ignore her sentimental swoon. How is your other patient?”