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Updated: June 18, 2025
"Well, I'm hearing things," he muttered, soberly. It made him so nervous that he got up and walked back to where the troopers were digging. He saw the body of a woman being lowered into a grave and the sight reminded him of what Slingerland had said. He saw the scout searching around and he went over to him. "Have you found the girl?" he asked. "Not yet. I reckon the devils made off with her.
His eyes, sweeping up from the path, saw fringed and beaded buckskin, a stalwart form, a bronzed and bearded face, and keen, gray eyes warm with the light of gladness. He was gripped in hands of iron. "Son! hyar you air an' it's the savin' of me!" exclaimed a deep, familiar voice. "Slingerland!" cried Neale, and he grasped his old friend as a drowning man at an anchor-rope. "My God!
The roar of the rain drowned all other sounds outside. She wondered if Slingerland had returned to his cabin, and, if so, what he had done. She felt sorry for him. He would take the loss hard. But he would trail her; he would hear of a white girl captive in the Sioux camp and she would soon be free. How fortunate she was! A star of Providence had watched over her.
Neale was overcome by his emotion; he sensed that from these men he would learn something. The first look from them told him that his errand was known. "Howdy!" greeted Larry. "It shore is good to see you men the fust we've come on in an awful hunt through these heah hills." "Thar ain't any doubt thet you look it, friend," replied one of the trappers. "We're huntin' fer Slingerland.
Neale did not imagine he would ever forget that spot, but he took another long look to fix the scene indelibly on his memory. The charred wagons, the graves, the rocks over which the naked, gashed bodies had been flung, the three scraggy trees close together, and the ledge with the dark aperture at the base he gazed at them all, and then turned his horse to follow Slingerland.
"She's gone! ... She's gone!" Neale panted. "Wal, mebbe Slingerland moved camp an' burned this place," suggested Larry. "He was sore after them four road-agents rustled in heah." "No no. He'd have left the cabin. In case he moved Allie was to write me a note telling me how to find them. I remember we picked out the place to hide the note ... Oh! she's gone! She's gone!"
They had now gained a straight-away course for the work-train, so that with the Sioux behind they had only to hold out for a few miles. Brush appeared as well off as they were. Slingerland led by perhaps a hundred feet, far over to the left, and he was wholly out of range. It took a very short time at that pace to cover a couple of miles. And then the Indians began to creep up closer and closer.
"We shore got to ride!" was what Larry apparently yelled, though the sound of words drifted as a faint whisper to Neale. But the roar of buffalo hoofs was rapidly diminishing. Then Neale realized what it meant to keep close to the cowboy. Every moment Larry turned round both to watch the Indians and to have a glance at his comrade. They began to gain on Slingerland.
Slingerland called out to them to have an eye open for Indians on the war-path. "Wal, I don't like the looks of them fellars," he declared. Neale likewise took an unfavorable view of the visit, but Larry scouted the idea of there being any danger in a gang like that. "Shore they'd be afraid of a man," he declared.
"Wal, lass," he said, gently. The familiar voice was no dream, no treachery of her mind. Slingerland! She could not speak. She could hardly see. She swayed into his arms. Then when she felt the great, strong clasp and the softness of buckskin on her face and the odor of pine and sage and desert dust, she believed in his reality. Her heart seemed to collapse. All within her was riot.
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