studied
between his irregular appearances that she might wheedle more money from
her aunt to lavish on her brave. When discovered meeting him in secret
and by night, she was locked in her third story room and thought secure,
until the day revealed her gone by way of the lightning rod. They had to
resort to more stringent measures, but time and again she met him,
undetected until too late, and when at last her education was declared
complete, she had amazed her aunt by expressing willingness to go to
Frayne, when the good woman thought the objectionable kinsman abroad
with Buffalo Bill. Until too late, Mrs. Hay knew nothing of his having
been discharged and of his preceding them to the West. Then Nanette
begged her for more money, because he was in dreadful trouble;--had
stabbed a police officer at Omaha, whose people, so Moreau said, agreed
not to prosecute him if one thousand dollars could be paid at once.
Hay's patience had been exhausted. He had firmly refused to contribute
another cent to settle Moreau's scrapes, even though he was a distant
kinsman of his wife, and they both were fond of his little sister Fawn
Eyes. It had never occurred to Mrs. Hay that Nan could steal from or
plot against her benefactors, but that was before she dreamed that
Nanette had become the Indian's wife. After that, anything might happen.
"If she could do _that_ for love of Moreau," said she, "there was
nothing she could not do."

And it would seem there was little short of deliberate murder she had
not done for her Sioux lover, who had rewarded her utter self-sacrifice
by a savage blow with a revolver butt. "Poor Nanette!" sobbed Mrs. Hay,
and "Poor Nanette!" said all Fort Frayne, their distrust of her buried
and forgotten as she lay, refusing herself to everyone; starving herself
in dull, desperate misery in her lonely room. Even grim old "Black
Bill," whom she had recognized at once,--Bill, who had been the first to
confirm Blake's suspicions as to her identity,--had pity and compassion
for her. "It's the way of the blood," said Blake. "She is

"'Bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths.'"

"She could do no different," said the general, "having fixed her love on
him. It's the strain of the Sioux. _We_ call her conduct criminal:--they
call it sublime."

And one night, while decision in Nanette's case was still pending, and,
still self-secluded, she hid within the trader's home, refusing speech
w