will kill me to lay like this."
"No matter if it does; you write."
"You're not a woman at all; you're like iron--white iron," whined the other. "Any woman with a heart--" and the weak tears came in her eyes.
"No, I have no heart to be touched by you," answered the girl. "You had a chance to live a decent life, and you wouldn't take it. You had an honest man to trust you and take care of you, and you paid him with deceit. Don't expect pity from me; but write that order."
She tried to write but could not, and the girl took the pencil.
"I will write it, and you can sign it," she said; "that will do as well."
Thus it was accomplished, and the woman was again laid lower in the bed.
"You are terrible hard on--on folks that ain't just square," she said. "You needn't be so proud; you ain't dead yet yourself. You don't know what may happen to you."
"I know," said the girl, coldly, "that if I ever brought children into the world, to be thrown on strangers' hands and brought up in the streets to live your sort of life, I would expect a very practical sort of hell prepared for me. Have you anything more to tell me? I'm going."
"Oh--h! I wish you hadn't said that about hell. I'm dreadful afraid of hell," moaned the woman.
"Yes," said the girl; "you ought to be."
"How hard you are! And the doctor said I would die to-night."
Then she lay still quite a while, and when she spoke again, her voice seemed weaker.
"You have that order for Gracie, and you are so hard-hearted. I don't know what you will do--and I don't want her to grow up like me."
"That is the first womanly thing I have heard you say," replied the girl.
She went over to the bed and took the woman's hands in hers, looking at her earnestly.
"Your child shall have a beautiful and a good home," she said, reassuringly. "I am going for her myself to-morrow, and she will never lack care again. Have you any other word to give me?"
The woman shook her head, and then as 'Tana turned away, she said:
"Not unless you would kiss me. You are not like other women; but--will you kiss me?"
And, with the pressure of the dying kiss on her lips, 'Tana went out the door.
"Please give her every care money can secure for her," she said to the woman at the door; while the man, minus the pipe, was there to open it.
"Mr. Harvey, can I trouble you to look after it for me? You know the doctor and can learn all that is needed. Have the bills sent to me; and let me know when it is all--over."
They reached the theater just as the curtain went down on the last act, and she remained in the carriage until her own party came out.
"I can hardly thank you enough for coming after me to-night," she said, as she shook hands very cordially with Harvey. "You can never be a mere acquaintance to me again. You are my friend."
"Have I ignorantly done some good?" he asked, and she smiled at him.
"Yes--more than you know--more than I can tell you."
"Then may I hope not to be forgotten when you are in Italy?"
"Oh!" and the color flushed over all the pallor caught from that deathbed. "But I--I don't think I will go to Italy after all, Mr. Harvey. I have changed my mind about that, and think I will go back to the Kootenai hills instead."
CHAPTER XXVII.
LIFE AT TWIN SPRINGS.
Over all the land of the Kootenai the sun of early June was shining. Trees of wild fruits were white with blossoms, as if from far above on the mountains the snows had blown down and settled here and there on the new twigs of green.
And high up above the camp of the Twin Springs, Overton and Harris sat looking over the wide stretches of forest, and the younger man looked troubled.
"I think your fear is all an empty affair," he said, in an argumentative tone. "You eat well and sleep well. What gives you the idea you are to be called in soon?"
"Several things," said the other, slowly, and his speech was yet indistinct; "but most of all the feel of my feet and legs. A week ago my feet turned cold; this week the coldness is up to my knees, and it won't go away. I know what it means. When it gets as high as my heart I'll be done for. That won't take long, Dan; and I want to see her first."
"She can't help you."
"Yes, she can, too. You don't know. Dan, send for her."
"Things are all different with her now," protested the other. "She's with friends who are not of the diggings or the ranges, Joe. She is going to marry Max Lyster; and, altogether, is not the same little girl who made our coffee for us down there in the flat. You must not expect that she will change all her new, happy life to run back here just because you want to talk to her."
"She'll come if you telegraph I want her," insisted Harris. "I know her better than you do, Dan. The fine life will never spoil her. She would be happier here to-day in a canoe than she would be on a throne. I know her best."
"She wasn't very happy before she left here."
"No," he agreed; "but there were reasons, Dan. Why are you so set against her coming back?"
"Set against it? Oh, no."
"Yes, you are. Mrs. Huzzard and all the camp would be only too glad to see her; but you--you say no. What's your reason?"
"Joe, not many months ago you tried to make me suspicious of her," said Overton, not moving his eyes from a distant blue peak of the hills. "You remember the day you fell in a heap? Well, I've never asked you your reasons for that; though I've thought of it considerably. You changed your mind about her afterward, and trusted her with the plan of this gold field down here. Now, you had reasons for that, too; but I never have asked you what they are. Do the same for me, will you?"
The other man did not answer for a little while, but he watched Dan's moody face with a great deal of kindness in his own.
"You won't tell me?" he said at last. "Well, that's all right. But one of the reasons I want her back is to make clear to you all the unexplained things of last summer. There were things you should have been told--that would have made you two better friends, would have broken down the wall there always seemed to be between you--or nearly always. (She wouldn't tell you, and I couldn't.) It left her always under a cloud to you, and she felt it. Many a time, Dan, she has knelt beside me and cried over her troubles to me--and they were troubles, too!--telling them all to me just because I couldn't speak and tell them again. And I won't, unless she lets me. But I don't want to go over the range and know that you two, all your lives, will be apart and cold to each other on account of suspicions I could clear away."
"Suspicions? No, I have no suspicions against her."
"But you have had many a troubled hour because of that man found dead in her room, and his visit to her the night before, and that money she asked for that he was after. All such things that you could not clear her of in your own mind, when you cleared her of murder--they are things I want straightened out before I leave, Dan. You have both been good friends to me, and I don't want any bar between you."
"What does all that matter now, Joe? She is out of our lives, and in a happier one some one else is making for her. I am not likely ever to see her again. She won't come back here."
"I know her best; she will come if she is needed. I need her for once; and if you don't send for her, I will, Dan. Will you send?"
But Overton got up and walked away without answering. Harris thought he would turn back after a little while, but he did not. He watched him out of sight, and he was still going higher up in the hills.
"Trying to walk away from his desire for her," thought Joe, sadly. "Well, he never will. He thinks I don't know. Poor Dan!"