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Updated: June 18, 2025
You are Milly Erne's child. Your name is Elizabeth Erne. You're not Oldring's daughter. You're the daughter of Frank Erne, a man once my best friend. Look! Here's his picture beside Milly's. He was handsome, an' as fine an' gallant a Southern gentleman as I ever seen. Frank came of an old family. You come of the best of blood, lass, and blood tells."
Lassiter will tell you how I shot her for a rustler, saved her life all the story. It's a strange story, Jane, as wild as the sage. But it's true true as her innocence. That you must believe." "Oldring's Masked Rider! Oldring's daughter!" exclaimed Jane "And she's innocent! You ask me to believe much. If this girl is is what you say, how could she be going away with the man who killed her father?"
He heard Oldring whisper and saw him sway like a log and fall. Then a million bellowing, thundering voices gunshots of conscience, thunderbolts of remorse dinned horribly in his ears. He had killed Bess's father. Then a rushing wind filled his ears like a moan of wind in the cliffs, a knell indeed Oldring's knell.
"Yes, of course all the time always." "But Bess, you told me you let me think I made out you were a so so ashamed." "It is my shame," she said, with voice deep and full, and now the scarlet fired her cheek. "I told you I'm nothing nameless just Bess, Oldring's girl!" "I know I remember. But I never thought " he went on, hurriedly, huskily.
Who am I to judge her? I'll glory in my love for her. But I can't tell it can't give up to it." Certainly he could not then decide her future. Marrying her was impossible in Surprise Valley and in any village south of Sterling. Even without the mask she had once worn she would easily have been recognized as Oldring's Rider.
"But my riders where are they?" "I don't know. The night-riders weren't there last night when I rode down, en' this mornin' I met no day-riders." "Judkins! Bern, they've been set upon killed by Oldring's men!" "I don't think so," replied Venters, decidedly. "Jane, your riders haven't gone out in the sage." "Bern, what do you mean?" Jane Withersteen turned deathly pale.
The cliffs sang and the caves rang with Oldring's knell, and the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, the echoes crashed and crashed, and the rains flooded the valley. Wild flowers sprang up everywhere, swaying with the lengthening grass on the terraces, smiling wanly from shady nooks, peeping wondrously from year-dry crevices of the walls. The valley bloomed into a paradise.
Starvation in the uplands was not an unheard-of thing; he did not, however, worry at all on that score, and feared only his possible inability to supply the needs of a woman in a weakened and extremely delicate condition. If there was no game in the valley a contingency he doubted it would not be a great task for him to go by night to Oldring's herd and pack out a calf.
That silence suddenly broke to the scrape and crash of Oldring's chair as he rose; and then, while he passed, a great gloomy figure, again the thronged room stilled in silence yet deeper. "Oldring, a word with you!" continued Venters. "Ho! What's this?" boomed Oldring, in frowning scrutiny. "Come outside, alone. A word for you from your Masked Rider!"
And, from what he had learned in the last few days, a belief began to form in Venters's mind that Oldring's intimidations of the villages and the mystery of the Masked Rider, with his alleged evil deeds, and the fierce resistance offered any trailing riders, and the rustling of cattle these things were only the craft of the rustler-chief to conceal his real life and purpose and work in Deception Pass.
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