Warren sheaf., 1903-07-09

gaities and a crowd Of outside Of
ficers, and, as luck would have it,
Mr.. Field was ordered thither as a
witness in two important cases. The
captain and his good wife went by
stage; Esther and Beverly rode every
inch Of the way in saddle, camping
over night with their joyous little
party at LaBonte. Then came love-
ly week at Laramie, during which
Mr.. Field had but little to do but de-
vote himself to, and dance with, Es-
ther, and when his final testimony
was given and he returned to his sta
ton, and not until then, Esther Dade
j discovered that life had little interest
or joy without him; but Field rode
back unknowing, and met at Frayne,
before Esther Dade's return, a girl
who had come almost unheralded,
making the journey over the Medi-
cine Bow from Rock Springs on the
Union Pacific in the comfortable car
riage of old Bill Hay, the post trader,
escorted by that redoubtable woman,
Mrs. Bill Hay, and within the week of
. her arrival Nanette Flower was the
toast of the bachelors mess, the
talk of every household at Fort
Frayne. a.
Hay, the trader, had prospered in
his long years on the frontier, first as
trader among the Sioux, later as suit
Ter, and finally, when congress abol-
ished that title, substituting therefor
the euphemism, without material clog
upon the perquisites, as post trader
at Fort Frayne. No one knew how
much he was worth, for while appar-
emily most open-hearted, whole
souled fellow, Hay was reticence it.
self when his fortunes or his family
were matters of question or COM
.ment. He had long been married,
and Mrs. Hay, when at the post, was
social sphinx-kind-heart chari-
table, lavish to the soldiers wives
and children, and devotion itself to
the families of the officers when sick
ness and trouble came, as come in
the old days they often did. 1t was
she who took poor Ned Robinson's
young widow and infant all the way
to Cheyenne when the Sioux butch
cred the luckless little hunting party
down by Laramie Peak. It was she
who nursed Capt. FORESTS wife and
daughter through ten weeks of
typhoid, and, with her own means,
sent them to the seashore, while the
husband and father was far up on
the Yellowstone, cut off from all COM
mRnication in the big campaign of '76.
It was she who built the little chapel
and decked and dressed it for Easter
and Christmas, despite the fact that
she herself had been baptized in the
Roman Catholic faith. 1t was she who
went at once to every woman in the
garrison whose husband was ordered
. out on scout or campaign, proffering
: aid and comfort, despite the fact long
whispered in the garrisons of the
Platte country, that in the old, old
days she had far more friends among
the red men than the white. That
could well be, because in those days
white men were few and far between.
Everyone had heard the story that it
was through her the news of the
massacre at Fort Phil Kearney was
made known to the post commander,
for she could speak the dialects of
both the Arapahoe and the Sioux, and
she had the sign language of the
plains veritably at her fingers ends.
There were not lacking those who de-
clared that Indian blood ran in her
veins-that her mother was an
Ogallala squaw and her father a
French Canadian fur trapper, story
to which her raven black hair and
brows, her deep, dark eyes and some
what swarthy complexion gave no
little color. But, long years before,
Bill Hay had taken her east, where
he had relatives, and where she
studied under excellent masters, re-
turning to him summer after sum-
mer with more and more of refine
ment in manner, and so much of
style and fashion in dress that her
annual advent had come to be looked
upon as quite the event of the sea-
son, even by women of the social po-
sition of Mrs. Ray and Mrs. Blake,
the recognized leaders among the
young matrons of the -th cavalry,
and by gentle Mrs. Dade, to whom
every one looked up in respect-al-
most in reverence. Despite the mys-
terry about her antecedents there was
every reason why Mrs. Hay should
be held in esteem and affection: Bill
Hay himself was diamond in the
rough-square, steady, uncompromis-
ing, generous and hospitable; his
great pride and glory was his wife;
his one great sorrow that their only
child had died almost in infancy. His
solecisms in syntax and society were
many. He was given at times to pro-
family, and at others, when madame
was away, to draw poker; but Off
GERS and men alike proclaimed him
man of mettle and never hesitated
to go to him when in financial
straits, sure of INDUSTRIOUS aid. But
even had this not been the case, the
popularity of his better half would
have carried him through, for there
was hardly q woman at Frayne to
speak Of her except in terms OF pen-