That Girl Montana. Ryan Marah Ellis
Now, you’re making game, I guess. That’s what you’re up to, captain,” and Mrs. Huzzard attempted a chaste blush and smile, and succeeded in a smirk. “I’m sure, now, that to hem a few neckties an’ sich like for you is no good reason for thinking I’m doing the same for every one that comes around. No, indeed; my heart ain’t so tender as all that.”
The captain, from under his sandy brows, looked with a certain air of satisfaction at the well rounded personality of Mrs. Huzzard. His vanity was gently pleased – she was a fine woman!
“Well, I mightn’t like it so well myself if I thought you’d do as much for any man,” he acknowledged. “There’s too many men at the Ferry who ain’t fit even to eat one of the pies you make.”
Mrs. Huzzard was fluting the edge of a pie at that moment, and looked across the table at the captain, with arch meaning.
“Maybe so; but there’s a right smart lot of fine-looking fellows among them, too; there’s no getting around that.”
The unintelligible mutter of disdain that greeted her words seemed to bring a certain comfort to her widowed heart, for she smiled brightly and flipped the completed pie aside, with an airy grace.
“Now – now, Captain Leek, you can’t be expecting common grubbers of men to have all the advantages of manners that you’ve got. No, sir; you can’t. They hain’t had the bringing up. They hain’t had the schooling, and they hain’t had the soldier drills to teach them to carry themselves like gentlemen. Now, you’ve had all that, and it’s a sight of profit to you. But don’t be too hard on the folks that ain’t jest so finished like as you. There’s that new Rivers girl, now – she ain’t a bad sort, though it is queer to see your boy Dan toting such a stranger into camp, for he never did seem to take to girls much – did he?”
“It’s not so easy to tell what he’s taken to in his time,” returned the captain, darkly. “You know he isn’t my own boy, as I told you before. He was eight years old when I married his mother, and after her death he took the bit in his own teeth, and left home. No great grief to me, for he wasn’t a tender boy to manage!” And Captain Leek heaved a sigh for the martyrdom he had lived through.
“Oh, well, but see what a fine man he’s turned out, and I’m sure no own son could be better to you,” for Mrs. Huzzard was one of the large, comfortable bodies, who never see any but the brightest side of affairs, and a good deal of a peacemaker in the little circle where she had taken up her abode. “Indeed, now, captain, you’ll not meet many such fine fellows in a day’s tramp.”
“If she’d even been a real Indian,” he continued, discontentedly, “it would have been easier to manage her – to – to put her in some position where she could earn her own living; for by Dan’s words (few enough, too!) I gather that she has no money back of her. She’ll be a dead weight on his hands, that’s what she’ll be, and an expensive savage he’ll find her, I’ll prophesy.”
“Like enough. Young ones of any sort do take a heap of looking after. But she’s smart, as I said before, and I do think it’s a sight better to make room for a likely young girl than to be scared most to death with young wolves and bears tied around for pets. I was all of a shiver at night on account of them. I’ll take the girl every time. She won’t scratch an’ claw at folks, anyway.”
“Maybe not,” added the captain, who was too contented with his discontent to let go of it at once. “But no telling what a young animal like that may develop into. She has no idea whatever of duty, Mrs. Huzzard, or of – of veneration. She contradicted me squarely this morning when I made some comment about those beastly redskins; actually set up her ignorance against my years of service under the American flag, Mrs. Huzzard. Yes, madame! she did that,” and Captain Leek arose in his wrath and tramped twice across the room, halting again near her table and staring at her as though defying her to justify that.
When he arose, one could see by the slight unsteadiness in his gait that the cane in his hand was for practical use. His limp was not a deformity – in fact, it made him rather more interesting because of it; people would notice or remember him when nothing else in his personality would cause them to do so.
For Captain Alphonso Leek was not a striking-looking personage. His blue eyes had a washed-out, querulous expression. His sandy whiskers had the appearance of having been blown back from his chin, and lodged just in front of his ears. An endeavor had been made to train the outlying portions of his mustache in line with the lengthy, undulating “mutton chops;” but they had, for well-grounded reasons, failed to connect, and the effect was somewhat spoiled by those straggling skirmishers, bristling with importance but waiting in vain for recruits. The top of his head had got above timber line and glistened in the sun of early summer that streamed through the clear windows of Mrs. Huzzard’s back room.
But as that head was generally covered by a hat that sported a cord and tassel, and as his bulging breastbone was covered by a dark-blue coat and vest, on which the brass buttons shone in real military fashion – well, all those things had their weight in a community where few men wore a coat at all in warm weather.
Mrs. Huzzard, in the depths of her being, thought it would be a fine thing to go back to Pennsylvania as “Mrs. Captain,” even if the captain wasn’t as forehanded as she’d seen men.
Even the elegant way in which he could do nothing and yet diffuse an air of importance, was impressive to her admiring soul. The clerical whiskers and the military dress completed the conquest.
But Mrs. Huzzard, having a bit of native wisdom still left, knew he was a man who would need managing, and that the best way was not to let his opinion rule her in all things; therefore, she only laughed cheerily at his indignation.
“Well, captain, I can’t say but she did flare up about the Indians, when you said they were all thieves and paupers, stealing from the Government, and all that. But then, by what she says, she has knowed some decent ones in her time – friends of hers; an’ you know any one must say a good word for a friend. You’d do that yourself.”
“Maybe; I don’t say I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But I do say, the friends would not be redskins. No, madame! They’re no fit friends for a gentleman to cultivate; and so I have told Dan. And if this girl owns such friends, it shows plainly enough that the class she belongs to is not a high one. Dan’s mother was a lady, Mrs. Huzzard! She was my wife, madame! And it is a distress for me to see any one received into our family who does not come up to that same level. That is just the state of the case, and I maintain my position in the matter; let Dan take on all the temper he likes about it.”
The lady of the pies did not respond to his remarks at once. She had an idea that she herself might fall under the ban of Captain Leek’s discriminating eyes, and be excluded from that upper circle of chosen humanity to which he was born and bred. He liked her pies, her flap-jacks, and even the many kinds of boiled dinners she was in the habit of preparing and garnishing with “dumplings.” So far as his stomach was concerned, she could rule supreme, for his digestion was of the best and her “filling” dishes just suited him. But Lorena Jane Huzzard had read in the papers some romances of the “gentle folk” he was fond of speaking of in an intimate way. The gentle folk in her kind of stories always had titles, military or civil, and were generally English lords and ladies; the villains, as generally, were French or Italian. But think as she might over the whole list, she could remember none in which the highbred scion of blue blood had married either a cook or a milliner. One might marry the milliner if she was very young and madly beautiful, but Lorena Jane was neither. She remembered also that beautiful though the milliner or bailiff’s daughter, or housekeeper’s niece might be, it was only the villain in high life who married her. Then the marriage always turned out at last to be a sham, and the milliner generally died of a broken heart.
So Mrs. Huzzard sighed and, with a thoughtful face, stirred up the batter pudding.
Captain Leek had given her food for reflection of which he was little aware, and it was quite a little while before she remembered to answer his remarks.
“So Mr. Dan is showing temper, too, is he? Well – well – that’s a pity. He’s a good boy, captain. I wouldn’t