Told in the Hills: A Novel

by Marah Ellis Ryan

Rumors were beginning to drift into camp of hostile intents of the Blackfeet; and a general feeling of uneasiness became apparent as no word came from the chief of their scouts, who had not shown up since locating the troops.

The Major's interest was decidedly alive in regard to him, since not a messenger entered camp from any direction who was not questioned on the subject. But from none of them came any word of Genesee.

Other scouts were there—good men, too, and in the southern country of much value; but the Kootenai corner of the State was almost an unknown region to them. They were all right to work under orders; but in those hills, where everything was in favor of the native, a man was needed who knew every gully and every point of vantage, as well as the probable hostile.

While Major Dreyer fretted and fumed over the absentee, there was more than one of the men in camp to remember that their chief scout was said to be a squaw man; and as most of them shared his own expressed idea of that class, conjectures were set afloat as to the probability of his not coming back at all, or if it came to a question of fighting with the northern Indians, whether he might not be found on the other side.

"You can't bet any money on a squaw man," was the decision of one of the scouts from over in Idaho—one who did not happen to be a squaw man himself, because the wife of his nearest neighbor at home objected. "No, gentlemen, they're a risky lot. This one is a good man; I allow that—a damned good man, I may say, and a fighter from away back; but the thing we have to consider is that up this way he's with his own people, as you may say, having taken a squaw wife and been adopted into the tribe; an' I tell you, sirs, it's jest as reasonable that he will go with them as against them—I'm a tellin' you!"

Few of these rumors were heard at the ranch. It was an understood thing among the men that the young ladies at Hardy's were to hear nothing of camp affairs that was likely to beget alarm; but Stuart heard them, as did the rest of the men; and like them, he tried to question the only one in camp who shared suspicion—Kalitan. But Kalitan was unapproachable in English, and even in Chinook would condescend no information. He doubtless had none to give, but the impression of suppressed knowledge that he managed to convey made him an object of close attention, and any attempt to leave camp would have been hailed as proof positive of many intangible suspicions. He made no such attempt. On the contrary, after his arrival there from the Gros Ventres, he seemed blissfully content to live all winter on Government rations and do nothing. But he was not blind by any means and understanding English, though he would not speak it, the chances were that he knew more of the thought of the camp than it guessed of his; and his stubborn resentment showed itself when three Kootenai braves slouched into camp one day, and Kalitan was not allowed to speak to them save in the presence of an interpreter, and when one offered in the person of a white scout, Kalitan looked at him with unutterable disdain, and turning his back, said not a word.

The Major was not at camp. He had just left to pay his daily visit to Hardy's; for, despite all persuasions, he refused to live anywhere but with his men, and if Fred did not come to see him in the morning, he was in duty bound to ride over to her quarters in the afternoon.

The officer in command during his absence was a Captain Holt, a man who had no use for an Indian in any capacity, and whose only idea of settling the vexed question of their rights was by total extermination and grave-room—an opinion that is expressed by many a white man who has had to deal with them. But he was divided between his impulse to send the trio on a double-quick about their business and the doubt as to what effect it would have on the tribe if they were sent back to it in the sulks. Ordinarily he would not have given their state of mind a moment's consideration; but the situation was not exactly ordinary, and he hesitated.

After stowing away enough provender in their stomachs to last an ordinary individual two days, and stowing the remainder in convenient receptacles about their draperies, intercourse was resumed with their white hosts by the suggestive Kalitan.

Just then Stuart and Rachel rode into camp. They had taken to riding together into camp, and out of camp, and in a good many directions of late; and in the coffee-colored trio she at once recognized the brave of the bear-claws whom she had spoken with during that "olallie" season in the western hills, and who she had learned since was a great friend of Genesee's. She spoke to him at once—a great deal more intelligibly than her first attempt—and upon questioning, learned that she was well remembered. She heard herself called "the squaw who rides" by him, probably from the fact that she was the only white woman met by their hunters in the hills, though she had not imagined herself so well known by them as his words implied.