ith 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 reassure
him. He blamed himself for everything and shrank even from his friends.
They saw the dim glow of the student lamp in his quarters, as they
jingled cheerily away. They were coming homeward, toward ten o'clock.
The moon was shining brilliantly along the bold heights of the southern
bank, and, insensibly, chat and laughter gradually ceased as they came
again in sight of the twinkling lights of Frayne, and glanced aloft at a
new-made scaffolding, standing black against the sky at the crest of
Fetterman Bluff. "Eagle Wing roosts high," said a thoughtless youngster.
"The general let them have their way to the last. What's that?" he
added, with sudden stop.

The sleigh had as suddenly been reined in. The driver, an Irish trooper,
crossed himself, for, on the hush of the breathless winter night, there
rose and fell--shrill, quavering, now high, now low, in mournful minor,
a weird, desolate, despairing chant, the voice of a heart-broken woman,
and one and all they knew at once it was Nanette, after the manner of
her mother's people, alone on the lofty height, alone in the wintry
wilderness, sobbing out her grief song to the sleeping winds, mourning
to the last her lost, her passionately loved brave.

Then, all on a sudden, it ceased. A black form started from under the
scaffolding to the edge of the bluff. Then again, weird, wild, uncanny,
a barbaric, almost savage strain burst from the lips of the girl.
"Mother of Heavin!" cried the driver. "Can no one shtop that awful keen.
It's her death song she's singin'!"

Two young officers sprang from the sleigh, but at the instant another
cry arose. Another form, this one of horse and rider, appeared at the
crest, silhouetted with the girl's against the stars. They saw the rider
leap from saddle, almost within arms' length of the singer; saw her
quickly turn, as though, for the first time, aware of an intruder. Then
the wailing so