Told in the Hills. Marah Ellis Ryan
you'll be worth it," burst out the other heart-brokenly; "worth a dozen times over more than I ever could be if I tried my best. You'll take good care of her, and—and—good God! If I could only speak to her once!"
"If you do, I'll know it, and I'll kill you!" said the man at the door.
He was about to walk out when the other arose bewilderedly.
"Wait," he said, and his livid face was convulsed pitifully. He was so little more than a boy. "This that you have told me has muddled my head. I can't think. I know the promises, and I'll keep them. If shooting myself would help her, I'd do that; but you say you are leaving the country, and Annie is to live on at the old place, and—and yet be respected? I can't understand how, with—under the—the circumstances. I—"
"No, I don't reckon you can," scowled the other, altogether unmoved by the despairing eyes and broken, remorseful words. "It isn't natural that you should understand a man, or how a man feels; but Annie's name shall be one you had a right to give her four months ago—"
"What are you saying?" broke in the other with feverish intensity; "tell me! tell me what it is you mean!"
"I mean that she shan't be cheated out of a name for herself and child by your damned rascality! Her name for the rest of her life will be the same as yours—just remember that when you forward that transfer. She is my wife. We were married an hour before I started."
Then the door closed, and the dark, malignant looking fellow stalked out into the morning sunlight, and through the scented walk where late lillies nodded as he passed. He seemed little in keeping with their fragrant whiteness, for he looked not a whit less scowlingly wicked than on his entrance; and of some men working on the lawn, one said to another:
"Looks like he got de berry debbel in dem snappin' eyes—see how dey shine. Mighty rakish young genelman to walk out o' dat doah—look like he been on a big spree."
And when the bride and her friend came chattering in, with their hands full of roses, they found a strange, unheard-of thing had happened. The tall young husband, so strong, so long acclimated, had succumbed to the heat of the morning, or the fragrance of the tuberose beside him, and had fallen in a fainting fit by the door.
PART SECOND
"A CULTUS CORRIE"
CHAPTER I.
ON SCOT'S MOUNTAIN.
"The de'il tak' them wi' their weeman folk, whose nerves are too delicate for a squaw man, or an Injun guide. I'd tak' no heed o' them if I was well, an' I'll do less now I'm plagued wi' this reminder o' that grizzly's hug. It gives me many's the twinge whilst out lookin' to the traps."
"Where's your gallantry, MacDougall?" asked a deep, rather musical voice from the cabin door; "and your national love for the 'winsome sex,' as I've heard you call it? If ladies are with them you can't refuse."
"Can I not? Well, I can that same now," said the first speaker, emphasizing his speech by the vim with which he pitched a broken-handled skillet into the cupboard—a cupboard made of a wooden box. "Mayhaps you think I haven't seen a white woman these six months, I'll be a breakin' my neck to get to their camp across there. Well, I will not; they may be all very fine, no doubt—folk from the East; but ye well know a lot o' tenderfeet in the bush are a sight worse to tak' the care of than the wild things they'll be tryin' to hunt. 'A man's a fool who stumbles over the same stone twice,' is an old, true sayin', an' I know what I'm talkin' of. It's four years this autumn since I was down in the Walla Walla country, an' there was a fine party from the East, just as these are; an' they would go up into the Blue Mountains, an' they would have me for a guide; an' if the Lord'll forgive me for associatin' with sich a pack o' lunatics for that trip, I'll never be caught wi' the same bait again."
"What did they do to you?" asked the voice, with a tinge of amusement in it.
"To me? They did naught to me but pester me wi' questions of insane devisin'. Scarce a man o' them could tether a beast or lasso one that was astray. They had a man servant, a sort o' flunky, to wait on them and he just sat around like a bump on a log, and looked fearsomely for Injuns an' grizzlies. They would palaver until all hours in the night, about the scientific causes of all things we came across. Many a good laugh I might have had, if I had na been disgusted wi' the pretenses o' the poor bodies. Why, they knew not a thing but the learnin' o' books. They were from the East—down East, they said; that is, the Southeast, I suppose they meant to say; and their flunky said they were well-to-do at home, and very learned, the poor fools! Well, I'll weary myself wi' none others o' the same ilk."
"You're getting cranky, Mac, from being too much alone;" and the owner of the voice lounged lazily up from the seat of the cabin door, and stood looking in at the disgusted Scotchman, bending ever so slightly a dark, well-shaped head that was taller than the cross-piece above the door.
"Am I, now?" asked the old man, getting up stiffly from filling a pan of milk for the cat. "Well, then, I have a neighbor across on the Maple range that is subject o' late to the same complaint, but from a wide difference o' reason;" and he nodded his head significantly at the man in the door, adding: "An' there's a subject for a debate, Jack Genesee, whether loneliness is worse on the disposition than the influence o' wrong company."
Jack Genesee straightened out of his lounging attitude, and stepped back from the door-way with a decision that would impress a man as meaning business.
"None o' that, MacDougall," he said curtly, dropping his hand with a hillman's instinct to the belt where his revolvers rested. "I reckon you and I will be better friends through minding our own business and keeping to our own territory in future;" and whistling to a beautiful brown mare that was browsing close to the cabin, he turned to mount her, when the old man crossed the floor quickly and laid a sinewy, brown hand on his arm.
"Bide a bit, Genesee," he said, his native accent always creeping upward in any emotion. "Friends are rare and scarce in this Chinook land. You're a bit hasty in your way, and mayhaps I'm a bit curious in mine; but I'll no let ye leave Davy MacDougall's like that just for the want o' sayin' I'm regretful at havin' said more than I should o' you and yours. I canna lose a friend o' four years for a trifle like that."
The frankness of the old man's words made the other man drop the bridle and turn back with outstretched hand.
"That's all right, Mac," he said, heartily; "say no more about it. I am uglier than the devil to get along with sometimes, and you're about straight when you say I'm a crank; only—well, it's nobody's fault but my own."
"No, o' course not," said MacDougall in a conciliatory tone as he went back to his dish-washing at the table—the dishes were tin pans and cups, and the dish-pan was an iron pot—"to be sure not; but the half-breeds are pizen in a man's cabin, an' that Talapa, wi' the name that's got from a prairie wolf an' the Injun de'il, is well called—a full-blood Injun is easier to manage, my lad; an' then," he added, quizzically, "I'm but givin' ye the lay o' the land where I've fought myself, an' mayhaps got wounded."
The "lad," who was about thirty-five, laughed heartily at this characteristic confession. There was evidently some decided incongruity between the old Scotchman's statement and his quaint housewifery, as he wrapped a cloth reduced to strings around a fork and washed out a coffee-pot with the improvised mop. Something there was in it