Told in the Hills: A Novel

by Marah Ellis Ryan

Her independent, curious spirit and youthful vitality were a sort of tonic to him, and as he grew better he accepted her invitation to visit the ranch, and from that time on the grizzled head and still athletic frame of the old fellow were not strange to the Hardy household. He was there as often as was consistent with the weather in the hills and almost seventy years of braving their hardships; for of late years MacDougall did not range widely. His traps could find too many nooks near home for mink, lynx, and the black bear, and from the Kootenai tribes on the north he bought pelts, acting the trader as well as trapper; and twice a year making a trip to a settlement to dispose of his wares, with horses from his Indian neighbors to transport them with.

Rachel learned that for forty years he had followed that isolated life—moving steadily farther west or farther north as the grip of civilization made itself felt behind him; and he felt himself crowded if a settler's prairie schooner was sighted within twenty-five miles of him. The girl wondered, often, the cause of that self-exile, but no word or sign gave her any clew. He had come from the eastern highlands of Scotland when less than thirty years old, and had struck out at once for the extreme borders of civilization in America; and there he had remained—always on the borders—never quite overtaken.

"It will be but a few more stands I can make," he would say to her sometimes. "Time is little content to be a laggard, and he is running me close in a race he has na' a doubt of winning."

With advancing years, the barrier, whatever the foundation, that he had raised between himself and the world was evidently weakening somewhat; and first through Genesee, and now through this girl, had come a growing desire for intercourse with his own race once more. And much teasing did the girl get in consequence of the visits that by the family in general were conceded to belong to Rachel in particular, teasing, however, which she bore with indifference, openly claiming that the stronger interest was on her side, and if he forgot his visits she would certainly go herself to Scot's Mountain to learn the why and wherefore. This she did more than once, through the season, when indoor life grew at all monotonous; sometimes with Jim as a companion, and sometimes with Kalitan trotting at her mare's head, and guiding very carefully Betty's feet over the dangerous places—Aunty Luce always watching such a departure with prophecies of "Miss Rache's sea'p a-hangin' round the neck o' that red nigger some o' these days, I'm a-tellin' yeh!"

Despite prophecies, Kalitan proved a most eager and careful guardian, seeming to feel rather proud when he was allowed to be her sole companion.

Sometimes he would say: "S'pose you hear where Genesee is—may be?" and at her negative he, like a philosopher of unlimited patience, would content himself with: "Sometime he sure come; s'pose waum illihie"—waum illihie meaning the summer-time; and Rachel, noting his faithfulness to that one idea, wondered how many seasons his patience would endure.

At last, about the middle of April, he stalked into the ranch door one morning early, scaring Aunty Luce out of her seven senses, or as many extra ones as she laid claim to.

"Rashell Hardy?" was all he deigned to address to that personage, so inborn in the Indian is the scorn of a slave or those of slavish origin. And Kalitan, who had lived almost entirely with his tribe, had many of the aristocratic ideas of race that so soon degenerate in the Indian of the settlements or haunts of the white man. Once Aunty Luce, not understanding his ideas of caste, thought to propitiate him with some kindly social inquiry as to the state of his health and well-being, and had beat an ignominious retreat to the floor above at the black look of indignation on his face at being questioned by a slave. When Rachel took him to task for such a ferocious manner, he answered, with a sullen sort of pride: "I, Kalitan, am of a race of chiefs—not a dog to be bidden by black blood;" and she had noticed then, and at other times, that any strong emotion, especially anger, gave an elevated tone and manner of speech to him and his race, lifting it out of the slurred commonplaces of the mongrel jargon—a direct contradiction of their white brother, on whom anger generally has an effect exactly contrary. After that one venture of Aunty's at timorous friendliness, she might have been a dumb woman so far as Kalitan ever had further knowledge; for her conversations in his presence were from that date carried on entirely in pantomime, often to the annoyance, though always to the amusement, of the family.

Kalitan's abrupt entrance and query that April morning was answered by a comprehensive nod and wave of pudgy black hands toward the sitting-room, into which he walked without knocking—that, also perhaps, being deemed a prerogative of his lordly race.

"Why, Kalitan, so early!" said Rachel in surprise. "Are you trying to outrun the sun? What is it?" For her eyes, accustomed to the usual calm of his countenance, recognized at once that some new current of emotion was struggling for supremacy in him that morning. He did not answer at once, but seated himself in impressive silence on the edge of one of the settees, and after a dramatic pause that he considered a fitting prelude to the importance of his communication, he addressed himself to Rachel—the only woman, by the way, whom he was ever known to meet or converse with on terms of equality, as Indian chivalry does not extend to their exaltation of the gentler sex.