fore coming into the room, so the first part was
lost. Mr. Gledware had come for his check-book, and the check was for
Red Kimball. Red Kimball used to be the leader of a band of highwaymen
up in Cimarron, when it was No-Man's Land; it was his hand that
attacked the wagon-train when Mr. Gledware acted the hero--only, as
they were disguised as Indians, Mr. Gledware didn't know they were such
till later. He came on them, afterward, without their disguises, and
they would have killed him if YOU, Brick, hadn't knocked down Red, and
shot his brother! So, as I listened, I found out that Mr. Gledware
wasn't the hero he claimed to be, but was THE MAN YOU SAVED; and he is
MY STEPFATHER; and I was carried away BY HIM, and taken FROM HIM by the
Indians; but he wasn't killed at all. And my name, I suppose is Lahoma
GLEDWARE, at least not as Red Feather had taught me, "Lahoma WILLOCK."
And I am NO kin to you, at all, Brick, you just took me in and cared
for me because you ARE Brick Willock, the dearest tenderest friend a
little girl ever had--and these lines are crooked because there are
tears--because you are not my cousin.

"I'd rather be kin to you than married to a prince.

"Red Kimball says you were one of his gang of highwaymen but I know it
ISN'T TRUE, so you don't have to say A WORD. But he is determined to
be revenged on you for killing his brother. And the reason he's waited
this long is because he didn't know where you were--good reason, isn't
it? Tell you how he found out--it all comes from my getting civilized!
He's a porter at our Kansas City hotel. So when he heard the men
talking about how I had once been kidnaped by the Indians, and wrote
nearly every day to my cousin Brick Willock, which they thought an odd
name--he guessed the rest.

"It makes my blood turn cold to think that all the time we were living
quietly and happily in the cove, that awful Red Kimball was hunting for
you, meaning to have your life--and in a way that I'm ashamed to write,
but must, so you'll know everything. He means to have you arrested and
tried for his brother's murder--and he says HE CAN HANG YOU!

"And Mr. Gledware is his witness. That's why Red has come after him.
You'll think it strange that after his gang were about to kill Mr.
Gledware in the prairie, that he should come to ask him to act as
witness against another man. That's what Mr. Gledware told him. But
Red Kimball answered that it was all a bluff--they had never