Page:The Souvenir of Western Women.djvu/68

62 At last we reached my cabin. Not another living soul was within ten miles of us. Behind and on either side stretched the forests; in front lay the bay. My skill in medicine is not great, but the intuition which the Fates give us in a great emergency came to our aid. And finally the child slept.

The sunlight was fading. Killamah, the girl, sat beside me on the doorstep. The sleepy twitter of many birds—the solitary yelp of a distant coyote — the swish of the water as it lapped against the shore—merged into the sweet twilight and Killamah spoke.

"Will Sea Wind get—get well?"

"I cannot tell, dear; perhaps. I wish it more than anything in the world. And are you stronger now?"

"I am well. "You are young, Killamah, and—alone?" "Yes,"

"And is Sea Wind your child?"

"Yes."

"Has she a father, Killamah?"

The girl's dark eyes turned full upon me. "Yes."

For an instant her lips quivered, then she dropped her head in my lap.

I stroked the thick, dark hair. "Tell me, little one."

The musical voice was infinitely sadder and more beautiful than anything I had ever heard. Sometimes it faltered; sometimes the force of it thrilled me.

"Margaret Hill, you understand. You have a child?"

"No, Killamah." "Then you have loved? You not speak—Margaret Hill, you turn your head away. Are you angry?"

Ah, poor little one, and had she loved—too?

"No, Killamah, I am not angry. Go on."

"No person has ever heard, and you—you, Margaret Hill—you would not tell?"

"No, dear."

"Killamah is not an Indian. Her mother was half-breed, her father a Nehalem. Sixteen times since the birth of Killamah the wild geese have come to the marsh and have flown northward. When I was a child my father taught me to shoot and to paddle. He showed me how to trap the great bear and to steal softly, softly up to the deer, Killamah was his only child—she was wild and free. She knew no ways of a house. In the summer nights she slept under the starlights, and she killed and ate and gathered berries when she was hungry. She swam in the deep, cool streams in the forest when the sun was hot, and no one asked where Killamah had been.

"And then—then the mother went out over the trail, out over Necarnie — for provisions, she said, but my father had plenty. She went to a city — Astoria you call it. And then when she came back my father drove her away. She went back to the man. He was white.