A Daughter of the Sioux Part 16

"Not all--not all, general! Even I don't know all--She herself has said so. Hush! She's coming."

She was there! They had listened for swish of skirts or fall of slender feet upon the stairway, but there had not been a sound. They saw the reason as she halted at the entrance, lifting with one little hand the costly Navajo blanket that hung as a portiere. In harmony with the glossy folds of richly dyed wool, she was habited in Indian garb from head to foot. In two black, l.u.s.trous braids, twisted with feather and quill and ribbon, her wealth of hair hung over her shoulders down the front of her slender form. A robe of dark blue stuff, rich with broidery of colored bead and bright-hued plumage, hung, close clinging, and her feet were shod in soft moccasins, also deftly worked with bead and quill. But it was her face that chained the gaze of all, and that drew from the pallid lips of Lieutenant Field a gasp of mingled consternation and amaze. Without a vestige of color; with black circles under her glittering eyes; with lines of suffering around the rigid mouth and with that strange pinched look about the nostrils that tells of anguish, bodily and mental, Nanette stood at the doorway, looking straight at the chief. She had no eyes for lesser lights. All her thought, apparently, was for him,--for him whose power it was, in spite of vehement opposition, to deal as he saw fit with the prisoner in his hands. Appeal on part of Friends Societies, Peace and Indian a.s.sociations had failed.

The President had referred the matter in its entirety to the general commanding in the field, and the general had decided. One moment she studied his face, then came slowly forward. No hand extended. No sign of salutation,--greeting,--much less of homage. Ignoring all others present, she addressed herself solely to him.

"Is it true you have ordered him in irons and to Fort Rochambeau?" she demanded.

"It is."

"Simply because he took part with his people when your soldiers made war on them?" she asked, her pale lips quivering.

"You well know how much else there was," answered the general, simply.

"And I have told you he deserves no pity--of yours."

"Oh, you say he came back here a spy!" she broke forth, impetuously.

"It is not so! He never came near the post,--nearer than Stabber's village, and there he had a right to be. You say 'twas he who led them to the warpath,--that he planned the robbery here and took the money. He never knew they were going, till they were gone. He never stole a penny.

That money was loaned him honestly--and for a purpose--and with the hope and expectation of rich profit thereby."

"By you, do you mean?" asked the general, calmly, as before.

"By me? No! What money had I? He asked it and it was given him--by Lieutenant Field."

A gasp that was almost a cry following instantly on this insolent a.s.sertion--a sound of stir and start among the officers at whom she had not as yet so much as glanced, now caused the girl to turn one swift, contemptuous look their way, and in that momentary flash her eyes encountered those of the man she had thus accused. Field stood like one turned suddenly to stone, gazing at her with wild, incredulous eyes. One instant she seemed to sway, as though the sight had staggered her, but the rally was as instantaneous. Before the general could interpose a word, she plunged on again:--

"He, at least, had a heart and conscience. He knew how wrongfully Moreau had been accused,--that money was actually needed to establish his claim. It would all have been repaid if your soldiers had not forced this wicked war, and--" and now in her vehemence her eyes were flashing, her hand uplifted, when, all on a sudden, the portiere was raised the second time, and there at the doorway stood the former inspector general, "Black Bill." At sight of him the mad flow of words met sudden stop. Down, slowly down, came the clinched, uplifted hand. Her eyes, glaring as were Field's a moment agone, were fixed in awful fascination on the grizzled face. Then actually she recoiled as the veteran officer stepped quietly forward into the room.

"And what?" said he, with placid interest. "I haven't heard you rave in many a moon, Nanette. You are your mother over again--without your mother's excuse for fury."

But a wondrous silence had fallen on the group. The girl had turned rigid. For an instant not a move was made, and, in the hush of all but throbbing hearts, the sound of the trumpets pealing forth the last notes of tattoo came softly through the outer night.

Then sudden, close at hand, yet m.u.f.fled by double door and windows, came other sounds--sounds of rush and scurry,--excited voices,--cries of halt! halt!--the ring of a carbine,--a yell of warning--another shot, and Blake and the aide-de-camp sprang through the hallway to the storm door without. Mrs. Hay, shuddering with dread, ran to the door of her husband's chamber beyond the dining room. She was gone but a moment.

When she returned the little Ogalalla maid, trembling and wild-eyed, had come running down from aloft. The general had followed into the lighted hallway,--they were all crowding there by this time,--and the voice of Captain Ray, with just a tremor of excitement about it, was heard at the storm door on the porch, in explanation to the chief.

"Moreau, sir! Broke guard and stabbed Kennedy. The second shot dropped him. He wants Fawn Eyes, his sister."

A scream of agony rang through the hall, shrill and piercing. Then the wild cry followed:

"You shall not hold me! Let me go to him, I say--I am his wife!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DEATH SONG OF THE SIOUX

That was a gruesome night at Frayne. Just at tattoo the door leading to the little cell room had been thrown open, and the sergeant of the guard bade the prisoners come forth,--all warriors of the Ogalalla band and foremost of their number was Eagle Wing, the battle leader. Recaptured by Crabb and his men after a desperate flight and fight for liberty, he had apparently been planning ever since a second essay even more desperate. In sullen silence he had pa.s.sed his days, showing no sign of recognition of any face among his guards until the morning Kennedy appeared--all malice forgotten now that his would-be slayer was a helpless prisoner, and therefore did the Irishman greet him jovially.

"That man would knife you if he had half a chance," said the sergeant.

"Watch out for him!"

"You bet I'll watch out," said Kennedy, never dreaming that, despite all search and vigilance, Moreau had managed to obtain and hide a knife.

In silence they had shuffled forth into the corridor. The heavy portal swung behind them, confining the other two. Another door opened into the guardroom proper, where stood the big, red hot stove and where waited two blacksmiths with the irons. Once in the guard room every window was barred, and members of the guard, three deep, blocked in eager curiosity the doorway leading to the outer air. In the corridor on one side stood three infantry soldiers, with fixed bayonets. On the other, facing them, three others of the guard. Between them shuffled the Sioux, "Wing"

leading. One glance at the waiting blacksmiths was enough. With the spring of a tiger, he hurled himself, head foremost and bending low, straight at the open doorway, and split his way through the astonished guards like center rush at foot ball, scattering them right and left; then darted round the corner of the guard-house, agile as a cat.

And there was Kennedy confronting him! One furious lunge he made with gleaming knife, then shot like an arrow, straight for the southward bluff. It was bad judgment. He trusted to speed, to dim starlight, to bad aim, perhaps; but the little Irishman dropped on one knee and the first bullet tore through the muscles of a stalwart arm; the second, better aimed, pierced the vitals. Then they were on him, men by the dozen, in another instant, as he staggered and fell there, impotent and writhing.

They bore him to the cell again,--the hospital was too far,--and Waller and his aides came speedily to do all that surgery could accomplish, but he cursed them back. He raved at Ray, who entered, leading poor, sobbing little Fawn Eyes, and demanded to be left alone with her. Waller went out to minister to Kennedy, bleeding fast, and the others looked to Ray for orders when the door was once more opened and Blake entered with Nanette.

"By the general's order," said he, in brief explanation, and in an instant she was on her knees beside the dying Sioux. There and thus they left them. Waller said there was nothing to be done. The junior surgeon, Tracy,--he whom she had so fascinated only those few weeks before,--bent and whispered: "Call me if you need. I shall remain within hearing." But there came no call. At taps the door was once more softly opened and Tracy peered within. Fawn Eyes, rocking to and fro, was sobbing in an abandonment of grief. Nanette, face downward, lay p.r.o.ne upon a stilled and lifeless heart.

Flint and his escort duly went their way, and spread their story as they camped at Laramie and "the Chug." The general tarried another week at Frayne. There was still very much to keep him there; so, not until he and "Black Bill" came down did we at other stations learn the facts. The general, as usual, had little to say. The colonel talked for both.

A woful time, it seems, they had had with poor Nanette when at last it became necessary to take her away from her dead brave. She raged and raved at even her pleading aunt. Defiant of them all, from the general down, and reckless of law or fact, she vowed it was all a conspiracy to murder Moreau in cold blood. They gave him the knife, she declared, although it later developed that she had tossed it through the open window. They had given him the chance to escape--the sight of Kennedy, "who had striven to kill him twice before," and then of the blacksmiths, with their degrading shackles--all just to tempt him to make a dash for freedom;--just as they had lured and murdered Crazy Horse--Crazy Horse, his brave kinsman--not ten years before,--then had placed a dead shot on the path to life and liberty--a man who killed him in cold blood, as deliberately planned. These were her accusations, and that story took strong hold in certain circles in the far East, where "love of truth"

inspired its widespread publication, but not its contradiction when the facts became known. The same conditions obtain to-day in dealing with affairs across the sea.

Nanette said many other things before her final breakdown; and Hay and his sorrowing wife found their load of care far heaviest, for the strain of Indian blood, now known to all, had steeled the soul of the girl against the people at Fort Frayne, men and women both--against none so vehemently as those who would have shown her sympathy--none so malignantly as those who had suffered for her sake.

This was especially true of Field. In the mad hope of "getting justice,"

as she termed it, for the dead, she had demanded speech of the general, and, in presence of "Black Bill" and the surgeon, he had given her a hearing. It proved fatal to her cause, for in her fury at what she termed "the triumph of his foes," she lost all sense of right or reason, and declared that it was Field who had warned Stabber's band and sent them fleeing to unite with Lame Wolf,--Field who took the trader's horses and rode by night with Kennedy to warn them it was Webb's intention to surround the village at dawn and make prisoners of the men.

It was Field, she said, who furnished the money Moreau needed to establish his claim to a gold mine in the Black Hills, the ownership of which would make them rich and repay Field a dozen times over. It was Field who sought to protect her kindred among the Sioux in hopes, she said it boldly, of winning her. But the general had heard enough. The door was opened and Ray and Blake were ushered in. The former briefly told of the finding of her note in Field's room the night the adjutant was so mysteriously missing. The note itself was held forth by the inspector general and she was asked if she cared to have it opened and read aloud. Her answer was that Field was a coward, a dastard to betray a woman who had trusted him.

"Oh, he didn't," said Blake, drily. "'Twas just the other way. He couldn't be induced to open his head, so his friends took a hand. You got word of the outbreak through your Indian followers. You wrote to Field and sent the note by Pete, bidding him join you at that G.o.dless hour, telling him that you would provide the horses and that you must ride to Stabber's camp to see Moreau for the last time, as he was going at once to the Black Hills. You made Field believe he was your half brother, instead of what he was. You brought Moreau back to the post and took something, I can't say what, down to him from Mr. Hay's,--he waiting for you on the flats below the trader's corral. You should have worn your moccasins, as well as a divided skirt, that night instead of French-heeled _bottines_. The rest--others can tell."

The others were Kennedy and the recaptured, half recalcitrant Pete; the latter turned state's evidence. Kennedy told how he had wandered down into the flats after "the few dhrinks" that made him think scornful of Sioux; of his encounter with Eagle Wing, his rescue by Field and a girl who spoke Sioux like a native. He thought it was little Fawn Eyes when he heard her speak, and until he heard this lady; then he understood. He had been pledged to secrecy by the lieutenant, and never meant to tell a soul, but when he heard the lie the lady told about the lieutenant, it ended any promise.

Then Pete, an abject, whining wretch, was ushered in, and his story, when dragged out by the roots, was worst of all. Poor Mrs. Hay! She had to hear it, for they sent for her; somebody had to restrain Nanette.

Pete said he had known Nanette long time, ever since baby. So had c.r.a.paud. Yes, and they had known Eagle Wing, Moreau, always--knew his father and mother. Knew Nanette's father and mother. But Black Bill interposed. No need to go into these particulars, as substantiating Mrs.

Hay and himself, said he. "The lady knows perfectly well that I know all about her girlhood," so Pete returned to modern history. Eagle Wing, it seems, came riding often in from Stabber's camp to see Nanette by night, and "he was in heap trouble, always heap trouble, always want money,"

and one night she told Pete he must come with her, must never tell of it. She had money, she said, her own, in the trader's safe, but the door was too heavy, she couldn't open it, even though she had the key. She had opened the store by the back door, then came to him to help her with the rest. He pulled the safe door open, he said, and then she hunted and found two big letters, and took them to the house, and next night she opened the store again, and he pulled open the safe, and she put back the letters and sent him to Mr. Field's back door with note, and then over to saddle Harney and Dan, and "bring 'em out back way from stable."

Then later she told him Captain Blake had Eagle Wing's buckskin pouch and letters, and they must get them or somebody would hang Eagle Wing, and she kept them going, "all time going," meeting messengers from the Sioux camps, or carrying letters. She fixed everything for the Sioux to come and capture Hay and the wagon;--fixed everything, even to nearly murdering the sentry on Number Six. Pete and Spotted Horse, a young brave of Stabber's band, had compa.s.sed that attempted rescue. She would have had them kill the sentry, if need be, and the reason they didn't get Wing away was that she couldn't wait until the sentries had called off. They might even then have succeeded, only her pony broke away, and she clung to Eagle Wing's until he--he had to hit her to make her let go.

The wild girl, in a fury declared it false from end to end. The poor woman, weeping by her side, bowed her head and declared it doubtless true.

Her story,--Mrs. Hay's,--was saddest of all. Her own father died when she was very, very young. He was a French Canadian trader and traveller who had left them fairly well to do. Next to her Indian mother, Mrs. Hay had loved no soul on earth as she had her pretty baby sister. The girls grew up together. The younger, petted and spoiled, fell in love with a handsome, reckless young French half breed, Jean La Fleur; against all warnings, became his wife, and was soon bullied, beaten and deserted.

She lived but a little while, leaving to her more prosperous and level-headed sister, now wedded to Mr. Hay, their baby daughter, also named Nanette, and by her the worthy couple had done their very best.

Perhaps it would have been wiser had they sent the child away from all a.s.sociation with the Sioux, but she had lived eight years on the Laramie in daily contact with them, sharing the Indian sports and games, loving their free life, and rebelling furiously when finally taken East. "She"

was the real reason why her aunt spent so many months of each succeeding year away from her husband and the frontier. One of the girl's playmates was a magnificent young savage, a son of Crow Killer, the famous chief.

The father was killed the day of Crazy Horse's fierce a.s.sault on the starving force of General Crook at Slim b.u.t.tes in '76, and good, kind missionary people speedily saw promise in the lad, put him at school and strove to educate him. The rest they knew. Sometimes at eastern schools, sometimes with Buffalo Bill, but generally out of money and into mischief, Eagle Wing went from one year to another, and Nanette, foolishly permitted to meet him again in the East, had become infatuated. All that art and education, wealth, travel and luxury combined could do, was done to wean her from her pa.s.sionate adoration of this superb young savage. There is no fiercer, more intense, devotion than that the Sioux girl gives the warrior who wins her love. She becomes his abject slave. She will labor, lie, steal, sin, suffer, die, _gladly_ die for him, if only she believes herself loved in turn, and this did Nanette more than believe, and believing, slaved and 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 sc.r.a.pes, 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 b.u.t.t. "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 ident.i.ty,--had pity and compa.s.sion for her. "It's the way of the blood," said Blake. "She is

"'Bred out of that b.l.o.o.d.y 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 with anyone but little Fawn Eyes, a sleighing party set out from Frayne for a spin by moonlight along the frozen Platte. Wagon bodies had been set on runners, and piled with hay. The young people from officers' row, with the proper allowance of matrons and elders, were stowed therein, and tucked in robes and furs, Esther Dade among them, gentle and responsive as ever, yet still very silent. Field, in his deep mourning, went nowhere. He seemed humiliated beyond words by his connection with this most painful affair. Even the general failed to cheer and rea.s.sure him. He blamed himself for everything and shrank even from his friends.