"N—no; something besides, Miss. I've got a right smart of a ranch on the other side of the Maple range. It's running wild—no stock on it; but in Tamahnous Hill there's a hole I've been digging at for the past four years. MacDougall reckons I'm 'witched' by it, but it may pan out all right some of these days."
"Gold hunting?"
"No, Miss, silver; and it's there. I've got tired more than once and given it the klatawa (the go-by); but I'd always come back, and I reckon I always will until I strike it."
"And then?"
"Well, I haven't got that far yet."
And thus any curiosity about the man's life or future was generally silenced. He had told her many things of the past; his life in the mines of Colorado and Idaho, with now and then the diversion of a government scout's work along the border. All of that he would speak of without reserve, but of the actual present or of the future he would say nothing.
"I have read somewhere in a book of a man without a past," remarked the girl to Mrs. Hardy; "but our guide seems a man utterly without a future."
"Perhaps he does not like to think of it here alone," suggested Tillie thoughtfully; "he must be very lonely sometimes. Just see how he loves that horse!"
"Not a horse, Tillie—a klootchman kiuatan," corrected the student of Chinook; "If you are going to live out here, you must learn the language of the hills."
"You are likely to know it first;" and then, after a little, she added: "But noticing that man's love for his Mowitza, I have often thought how kind he would be to a wife. I think he has a naturally affectionate nature, though he does swear—I heard him; and to grow old and wild here among the Indians and squaw men seems too bad. He is intelligent—a man who might accomplish a great deal yet. You know he is comparatively young—thirty-five, I heard Hen say."