CHAPTER IV—WOO NAH AND THE FORTUNES

“Can we make it, Daddy?” asked Jane. “Doesn’t that look like a little cyclone cloud?” indicating the cloud with a “tail” that seemed to be gathering color and speed as the buckboard traveled on.

“Old Squatty’s cabin would be as good a place as any in a blow,” her father replied. “If we get one, we could put the horses in shelter around there, and maybe the lightning might give the old lady a real glimpse into the beyond. Shall we try it, sister?” to Miss Allen who was, as a rule, rather timid of the storms that sprung up so suddenly on the plains.

“I am perfectly willing,” acquiesced the lady. “As you say, brother, the cabin would be a comparatively safe place to seek shelter in.”

With that velocity peculiar to storms of the prairie the anticipated baby cyclone gathered force, and with one great gust and almost without warning broke over their heads.

Jane opened the curtains of the cart to allow the gale a way out, without incurring the possibility of upsetting them. Judith was simply fascinated with the sweep everything was taking, but Aunt Mary gathered herself as far as possible into her bonnet and wrap, scarcely venturing to speak while Mr. Allen held his horses in with a firm rein.

“Just a few paces,” he shouted reassuringly. “Hold tight!”

“All right,” called back Jane, and so deafening was the swirl that only a clear, loud voice such as she exercised could have made its way to the driver just in front.

Two big shaggy dogs intercepted the dash of the buckboard into the squaw’s lane. The old woman was still outside, hunched up in the queerest sort of a hammock, made of a halfed barrel, strung up to two young oak trees. With something like a howl she called the dogs off, and waved a stick to the travelers to come in, seemingly sensing the possibility of profit in their visit. Mr. Allen discovered where to find shelter for his team, and as the storm was tearing and scattering limbs of trees, and everything it could wrench from stability, he did not stop until he had entered the queer stable with the cart and its occupants.

“Now we are in for it,” he admitted, assisting Aunt Mary to alight. “I’m glad we are here and not on Steeple Hill.”

“Thrills!” exclaimed Judith. “More thrills. I have seen nothing but wonders since I came to Montana. I really think, Janie, I have had more real experiences while here than in all my coast touring.”

“Lovely of you to say so, Judy. But just wait till you see old Mrs. Teekawata. She is the wife of the one great medicine man, or rather his widow. Don’t mention fortune telling, that would offend her. She is a ‘scientist.’ She will mix up stuffs, and get clues from the smoke! That is if she is in a communicative mood.”

“Or in need of white bread,” amended Mr. Allen, who had overheard the girls. “Teekawata is a business woman with talents wasted. She should have been a copper queen.”

The storm was scattering almost as quickly as it had gathered. The old squaw had tumbled out of her half barrel, and leaning on her stick, awaited the party’s approach from the shack. Aunt Mary edged close to her brother. She had no love for these old Indians, and rather feared for her belongings when in their company.

“Greeting!” called Mr. Allen to the old woman. “Thunder Cloud sent you his good word. Did you see how he followed us in here?”

“Si si,” answered the woman, who was of the Mexican type. “Approach!” and she indicated an old bench under the mendicant vines that straggled around the hut. So heavy had they grown the rain of the shower had not penetrated their depths, and like a canopy, they arched over the poles, propped at ends for their support. She stared at the girls without any pretext of apology. Judith with her dark hair seemed particularly attractive to the squaw’s flagrant scrutiny. Aunt Mary remained outside.

“The young ladies wonder,” ventured Mr. Allen, “if you have heard from Teekawata lately, Woo Nah. Perhaps he has sent a message for their good health?”

“Health!” she repeated in good English. “The medicine man forgets not the health of good white brothers. The sunset gives light to their cheeks, and the stars sleep in their eyes,” she rhapsodied.

Jane nudged Judith to make note of the compliment.

“When Woo Nah was at the government school,” continued the Indian, “she has seen many young girl. They come to give English. Some with hair and eyes like the morning, others with the midnight hair and coals from the fire eyes. But they all like Woo Nah,” she insisted.

“Of course,” chimed in Jane. “We like her also. Will you tell us what you know from your great husband, the Medicine Man of Broken Hill?”

“Teekawata, would not that I should foretell. But I give a dream—a dream of happiness,” and she arose from the patched chair to lead the party within the cabin.

“I shall wait here,” concluded Aunt Mary, who had no curiosity about the fortune telling or the interior of the ramshackle hut. In fact she was holding unnecessarily tight to her small hand-bag.

“Woozy,” whispered Judith, whose eyes were sparkling like the coals or the quartz gems Woo Nah had described.

Within the cabin an assortment of snake skins and some very large ears of dried corn formed a queer decoration on the log walls. A few skins, perhaps those of the prairie rat, were also in evidence, while the glossy red corn with its artistic husk hung gracefully over a strange picture, that Jane told Judith was a portrait of the famous medicine man Teekawata. Chairs were relics of civilization which must have touched the spot at some time in a period of miners transition. The table was nailed to the wall and on it the litter of stuff spoiled an otherwise rustic effect. An American stove in the corner was evidently of the same vintage as the chairs, and there were other bits of furniture and dishes—perhaps accepted in payment for the services of the medicine man, who for years had given some sort of service to the settlers and their families.

“Not sisters?” asked and answered the old woman, to Judith and Jane.

“No, but very good friends,” Mr. Allen replied with a ring in his voice that Jane and her chum fully appreciated.

The old woman now took her place on a queer high stool. On a three-legged table just beneath this stool was a big Mexican earthen bowl. Carefully she took a cover off the rather pretty jar, and then opened what looked like a snuff box. This she squinted into with a show of importance and concern.

“For the ladies’ good health I will ask Teekawata to make promise,” she began. Then she lifted the snuff box above her head and muttered some unintelligible wail.

Judith had grasped Jane’s hand. The scene was getting weird and a return of the storm, a sort of backfire, made the whole thing seem uncanny.

“Experience,” whispered Jane. “Gives us material for school work.”

“Yes, but it is creepy,” answered back Judith. “I wish the storm would blow over.”

The old woman continued to mumble and make cabalistic passes with the snuff box. Finally she took a match and dropped some powder from the box into the bowl, struck the match on the side of her stool and put the flame to the powder. Soon a slim string of smoke climbed out from the edge of the jar.

Mr. Allen’s face wore so broad a smile that, if the girls had thought of attaching any significance to the performance, this would have dissipated it.

“Teekawata, come!” called the Indian.

“Midnight hair and starlight eyes,” began the squaw, “Teekawata sends greeting and health. In gold you will make the fortune of much. Much yet will you find in the great heart of friends. From the Bear come strong.” At this moment she brought her arms out in a gesture indicating strength, but Judith dodged. She liked the soothsaying as an entertainment, but objected to personal demonstrations. The old woman scowled. Jane was bowing her head in abject attention to make amends for her friend’s distraction.

“The Bear star will give our girl power,” suggested Mr. Allen to keep the squaw on the right track through the clouds.

“Hush!” exclaimed the woman. “Teekawata knows no white spirit.”

“Beg pardon,” Mr. Allen could not help whispering for it was too funny to interrupt a ghost like that.

The squaw wasted another pinch of her spirit power from the snuff box. She also shook her head apprehensively, to show that Teekawata would not stand for nonsense. It required a few moments for the “spirits” to get going again.

“Brave and strong and happy,” she finally conceded further to Judith’s future, and both girls secretly wondered if that would apply to Judith’s famous faculty of absent mindedness. An exchange glance between them was thus perfectly understood.

“A very safe fortune,” commented Mr. Allen with a degree of irony happily lost on the Indian. Never had information as to the possible future seemed so completely veiled, as that the old woman pretended to give out. To say nothing of generalities it was simply insipid.

Turning to Jane the Indian changed her tactics.

“The young lady make wish?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, certainly,” responded Jane. She covered her twitching face with her hands. Then she looked up and nodded. “I have wished.”

The Indian mixed more powder until the girls could no longer suppress a coughing fit. Mr. Allen looked vaguely at a window that was only a part of the scenery evidently, for vines were growing all over the ledge. He sighed and choked. Jane put up a detaining hand. She did not want her fortune interrupted.

“Much gold, much happiness, all the good luck,” began Woo Nah diplomatically. “On the horse it is to be ‘look out.’ No run over hill in dark. Woo Nah see big hole much dark—no too much run wild.” This advice was given in a tone of real warning.

Judith was delighted. Jane was being scolded for being too wild. She should not run away in the dark with Firefly. What a good joke on Jane!

Then, as if fearing an ill effect on her audience, Woo Nah quickly turned her cards, by stirring up the smoky powder again.

“In the big city there is too much go,” she now spoke with authority. “All go, go, not take rest for stars, or for great good in pale moon. Fiery head blaze to joy like paper with match, but no ashes keep for to-morrow. All blow away like Teekawata smoke,” and she pointed her sharp finger at the smoke Mr. Allen was vainly trying to ward off.

“Riches always and good health. No sorrow but from home,” she mumbled. “Friends come like the flowers, too thick to count, too thin for hold, but some stay so fast winter will not take. Girl with midnight cloud true for always; the one with the dried corn ropes,” (she twisted her hands over her head to illustrate where the corn silk rested on the head of some one to be suspected) “of that one beware. She is for evil, for enemy for the—sneak.” This last she fairly hissed, and in spite of themselves the girls’ minds reverted to Marian Seaton, who had made so much trouble for Jane. She had the hair of changeable corn silk, sometimes brown, on good days quite yellow, and between times a discouraged tawn.

“And my wish?” ventured Jane.

The old woman looked up and almost smiled. Perhaps she could see a good joke herself.

“It will—come—” she hesitated. The smoke was getting thin and its clouds were evidently difficult to translate. Finally she actually opened her mouth and swallowed what she could inhale of the vapor. Judith laughed outright, but Jane kept her eyes on the Indian in abject and wrapt attention. If she failed to “foretell” it would not be Jane’s fault.

“Firehead shall have her wish,” she exclaimed triumphantly, and Mr. Allen jumped to his feet to put the period on the “Kibosh.” He had had enough of the Indian rubbish, and felt the girls had about all they could enjoy.

It may seem bromidic to say the Indian rubbed her palms as Mr. Allen thrust his in his pockets, she may even have suffered some irritation from the smoke she had been gathering, at any rate when Mr. Allen handed her over a good clean green dollar, she all but kissed it, the girls would have testified.

“From New York?” asked Woo Nah as they prepared to leave.

“Yes,” replied Judith crisply.

“Woo Nah has friend New York. He make beauty,” she patted her cheek to illustrate how her friend made beauty in New York.

“Oh, a beauty doctor,” interrupted Jane.

“Yes, he send to Woo Nah and Woo Nah give the beauty medicine.” She hobbled over to a box and raising the cover displayed a lot of dried herbs or possibly weeds.

“Young lady like?” she asked.

“Why, yes. If it will give us beauty,” replied Jane with a quizzical smile at Judith, who was whispering to Mr. Allen.

“Make tea and wash hair with this,” and Woo Nah picked up a handful of the dried leaves. “I put the sunset water in bottle,” she took a small vial, into which she poured, from the big brown bottle, a very carefully measured out quantity of the colorless fluid. “This is for the face, and in the morning the beauty shines,” she declared. Jane accepted the little bottle with a show of gratitude. Judith was still the doubter, and made queer eyes during all the presentation speech.

“We have had a lovely time,” she did take the trouble to express. “Woo Nah, when you come to New York to see your friend the beauty doctor, you must look for us. Ask for Wellington College,” she finished, and, as if both girls could imagine that old Indian paying them a social call at the aristocratic Wellington, Jane and Judith bolted for the cabin door, and breathed more freely when out again in the refreshing air and struggling sunshine. It had cleared now and the sun was coming out.

“Oh, Aunt Mary!” exclaimed Jane contritely gathering up the bag and book. “Did we keep you too long?”

“I have my book,” answered Miss Allen, who had been out of doors during all the seance. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Oh, yes, it was—funny,” Jane said quietly. “Let’s hurry. Dad will be too late for his telephoning. I feel guilty to have detained him for all that nonsense. Aunt Mary, I am to be beautiful. I have a lotion guaranteed to make me so,” and she indicated the little bottle she held rather gingerly. Mr. Allen hurried to the old shack for the buckboard, and only the chatter of the two happy young girls marked the mileage of the home-going journey through the afternoon shadows of the Montana hills.