Bill "'membered."

"Didn't she cut into him sudden? Sarved him right, too."

"What did she do?"

"Cut him across the face with her quirt in good style."

"What for?"

"Knockin' about her Indian Joe."

Joe was, as I came to learn, Ponka's son and Gwen's most devoted slave.

"Oh, she ain't no refrigerator."

"Yes," assented Bill. "She's a leetle swift." Then, as if fearing he
had been apologizing for her, he added, with the air of one settling the
question: "But she's good stock! She suits me!"

The Duke helped me to another side of her character.

"She is a remarkable child," he said, one day. "Wild and shy as
a coyote, but fearless, quite; and with a heart full of passions.
Meredith, the Old Timer, you know, has kept her up there among the
hills. She sees no one but himself and Ponka's Blackfeet relations, who
treat her like a goddess and help to spoil her utterly. She knows their
lingo and their ways--goes off with them for a week at a time."