"My mother gave me to him," murmured the squaw apologetically.
"You took him!" cried Bela. "You go with him! Was he the best man you could get? I jump in the lake before I shame my children with a coyote for a father!"
Loseis looked strangely at her daughter. "Charley not your father," she said abruptly.
Bela pulled up short in the middle of her passionate outburst, stared at her mother with fallen jaw.
"You twenty year old," went on Loseis. "Nineteen year I marry Charley. I have another husband before that."
"Why you never tell me?" murmured Bela, amazed.
"So long ago!" Loseis replied with a shrug. "What's the use?"
Bela's tears were effectually called in. "Tell me, what kind of man my father?" she eagerly demanded.
"He was a white man."
"A white man!" repeated Bela, staring. There was a silence in the teepee while it sunk in. A deep rose mantled the girl's cheeks.