"And the Red Hatchet?"
"Has haunted my life ever since, and though I have told him I could hold no love for an Indian other than friendly regard, it has had no effect. To-day he bade me meet him, where you saw us, if I had any regard for my people. I obeyed, not daring to refuse, and then he told me that unless I became his wife he would turn the young warriors of his tribe loose upon the settlements. He it was who told me that you had killed Sitting Bull——"
"I had killed him?"
"Yes, so he said, and that he had attempted his rescue, but failed. I put him off with a promise to give him an answer within one week, and intended to ride to the quarters of General Carr and tell him the situation exactly. I dared not refuse."
"It was wise in you, Miss Bernard, to do so, and yet when I had him in my power you were the cause of his going free."
"Let me see if I can make clear to you my feelings about that. The Indian loves me, and that I could not hold against him. Then he it was who saved me from those bad warriors, at the risk of his own life, and for which he suffered greatly. That debt I could cancel in but one way, and to clear it utterly from my conscience I rode back to tell his captor that he was the friend, not the foe of the whites, for so he had ever appeared to be until his terrible threat to-day. Had I not said that he was not the leader of the redskin rescuers of Sitting Bull, you would still have held him prisoner, and if harm befell him it would have been through me. Thus it was that I told the falsehood, the double falsehood, in fact, about him, for I wished not his life upon my hands. Now that I have done my duty toward him, cancelled the debt of deep gratitude I owed him for his service to me, I tell you the secret, and of his dire threat of vengeance. Have I made myself fully understood, Lieutenant Kit Carey?"
"Fully, Miss Bernard."
"Then I shift all responsibility I hold to your broad shoulders," she said, with a smile.
"I accept the load, and wish now to beg your pardon for having misunderstood you as I did, for I will candidly confess that I believed that you were in love with your Indian lover."
She started, her eyes flashed fire, but when Kit Carey expected an angry response, she said, calmly: