not wait long to fulfill my work. When
the deed is done, if I still think life is precious, and his friends
press me too hard, I may look for safety, as you have done, with the
Sioux."

"Come and you shall find in me a sister, and in him a brother," cried
Addie Neidic.

"_A brother?_ I had one once," came in a low, sobbing cry from the young
Texan's lips; then, with his head bowed, and scalding tears rolling down
his cheeks, he drove the spurs into his horse, and sped away swiftly in
the direction of the old trail.

The Black Hawk horse, saddled and bridled, but riderless, galloped on by
the side of the Texan's fleet mustang, with no wish to part from his
company.

"He had death in his eye! He will kill Wild Bill, and we shall never see
him again," said Persimmon Bill. "The miners are rough, and condemn
before they try, and hang as soon as condemnation is spoken. I pity the
boy--for he is but a boy."

Addie Neidic smiled.

"We shall see your boy again," she said, "Something seems to whisper to
me that his fate is in some way linked with ours. I, too, feel sure that
he will kill Wild Bill, and then escape to join us. And you, my hero,
will rise till all these Indian nations call you king. How these who
follow you look up to you now, obeying every word or sign. And think, on
these vast plains, and in the endless range of hills, valleys, and
mountains, there must be countless thousands, who want but a daring,
skillful leader to make them the best light troops in the world."

"You are ambitions for me, dearest," said Bill, with a strange, sad
smile. "I hope to prove worthy of your aspirations. But we must move. I
head now for the Big Horn Valley, to meet Sitting Bull."

CHAPTER XIX.
"SAVE, OH, SAVE MY HUSBAND!"

"Safe and in port at last, as old Cale Durg used to say, when a scout
was over and he was back in garrison."

This was the joyous exclamation of Captain Jack Crawford, as he turned
to Sam Chichester when their party rode into the settlement at the
Deadwood Mines in the Black Hills. Escorted nearly all the way by the
cavalry they had so providentially met, they had been troubled no more
by the Indians, and excepting the loss of some horses, and part of their
"fit-out" and stores, had suffered nothing. Not a man had been hurt, and
best of all, they came in sober, for the benzine had all gone with the
lost packs, for it was heaviest on the mules, as it would have been on
the men, had it not been host.