es of the 'gators blazing in the
dark, these cool, bronze, turbaned devils with axes to sever the spinal
cord and rifles to shatter the skull--it's a wild and thrilling scene.

I'm sorry Carl was not so well. Now that Dad is kinder to the little
chap, we could have left him at St. Augustine if he'd been well enough
to make the trip. It bothers me that you're not along. It's my first
time without you, and you're a better shot than Grant and more
dependable in mood. I can't make out what's come over him of late.
He's so moody and reckless that the Indians think he's a devil. He's
more prone to wild whims than ever. We've shot wild turkey and bear
but I like the 'gator sport the best.

There's a curious white man here who's lived a good part of his life
with the tribe. He's a Spaniard, a dark-skinned, bitter, morose sort
of chap--really a Minorcan--whose Indian wife is dead. He has a
daughter, a girl of twenty or so whom the Seminoles call Nan-ces-o-wee.
He calls her simply Nanca. She speaks Spanish fluently. The morose
old Spaniard has taught her a fund of curious things. Her heavy hair,
black as a storm-cloud, falls to her knees. Grant says her wonderful
eyes remind him somehow of midnight water. Her eyebrows have the
expressive arch of the Seminole. Her color is dark and very rich, but
it's more the coloring of the Spanish father than the Seminole mother.
Altogether, she's more Spanish than Indian, I take it, though she's a
tantalizing combination of each in instinct. Her grace is wild and
Indian--and she walks lightly and softly like a doe. Ann, her face
haunts me.

Young as she is, this Nanca of whom I have written so much to you, has,
they tell me, had a most romantic history. With her beauty it was of
course, inevitable. Men are fools. At eighteen, urged into proud
revolt against her Seminole suitors by her father, who for all his
singular way of life can not forget his white heritage, she married a
young foreigner who came into the Glades hunting. He seems to have
been utterly without ties and decided to live with the Indians in the
manner of the Spaniard. A year or so later, a young artist imitator of
Catlin's made his way to the Seminole village with a guide. He had
been traveling about among the Indians of the reservations painting
Indian types, and had heard of this old turbaned tribe buried in the
Everglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think.
At any rate he wooed