In each case a Sioux father had sold his daughter to a young Ogallala brave, but in each case that Indian maiden had a sweetheart of her own. The story of the Banner county episode is this :

The village was situated on the little tableland where in 1885 Vance Cross homesteaded, just south of Long Springs branch, then unnamed, and the Ogallala had brought his ponies. On the morrow he was to claim his bride. She secretly left her lodge and found her sweetheart and they were making away

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

when discovered. Her irate father, the chief, had her whipped and her lover was put to death.

The next morning in the bright sunrise, she donned her finery and went humming a song through the village, wending her way to the south. Young braves looked admiringly upon her as she passed and wished that they were so fortunate as the Ogallala. He, too, looked in fond admiration and anticipation. She was observed to ascend the slope of Table mounttain, and she paused on its eastmost extremity, where the countless ages of wind-erosion have made a perpendicular cliff.

Here she raised her arms towards the sun and commenced to sing. The music, as it came to the village, all the inhabitants of which were now watching her, sounded weird and sweet, but was instantly recognized as the song of death. A dozen braves ran to save her, but in vain.

They had almost reached her when she threw aside her blanket and as a statue of bronze stood for a moment in the morning sun, then with a cry that she would meet her lover in the Shades, she went over the cliff, and was crushed to death at the feet of "Lover's Leap."