"Yes, it is," he agreed; but his eyes were not on the valley of the Kootenai, but on the girl's face.
CHAPTER III.
WHAT IS A SQUAW MAN?
"Rache, I want you to stop it." The voice had an insinuating tone, as if it would express "will you stop it?"
The speaker was a chubby, matronly figure, enthroned on a hassock of spruce boughs, while the girl stretched beside her was drawing the fragrant spikes of green, bit by bit, over closed eyes and smiling; only the mouth and chin could be seen under the green veil, but the corners of the mouth were widening ever so little. Smiles should engender content; they are supposed to be a voucher of sweet thoughts, but at times they have a tendency to bring out all that is irritable in human nature, and the chubby little woman noted that growing smile with rising impatience.
"I am not jesting," she continued, as if there might be a doubt on that question; "and I wish you would stop it."
"You haven't given it a name yet. Say, Clara, that sounds like an invitation to drink, doesn't it?—a western invitation."
But her fault-finder was not going to let her escape the subject like that.
"I am not sure it has a name," she said curtly. "No one seems to know whether it is Genesee Jack or Jack Genesee, or whether both are not aliases—in fact, the most equivocal sort of companion for a young girl over these hills."