ul!" said a low, kind voice just behind
him.

It was that of Willie Pond.

"Oh, go home and mind your business. I'll break this bank to-night, or
die in the trial!" cried Bill, defiantly.

"You'll die before you break it!" shrieked out a shrill, sharp voice,
and the red-haired Texan sprang forward with an uplifted bowie-knife,
and lunged with deadly aim at Bill's heart, even as the person we have
so long known as Willie Pond shrieked out:

"Save, oh, save my husband!"

But another hand clutched the hilt of the descending knife and the hand
of a short, thickset, beetle-browed desperado, was shouted, as he drew a
pistol with his other hand:

"Wild Bill is my game. No one living shall cheat me of my revenge! Look
at this scar, Bill--you marked me for _life_ and now I mark you for
_death!_"

And even as he spoke, the man fired, and a death-shot pierced Wild
Bill's heart.

The latter, who had risen to his feet, staggered toward the Texan, who
struggled to free his knife-hand from the clutch of the real assassin,
and with a wild laugh, tore the false hair from the Texan's head. As a
roll of woman's hair came down in a flood of beauty over her shoulders,
Bill gasped out:

"Jack McCall, I'm thankful to you, even though you've killed me. Wild
Bill does not die by the hand of a _woman!"_

A shudder, and all was over, so far as Wild Bill's life went.

His real and true wife wept in silence over his body, while sullen, and
for a time silent, the supposed Texan stood and gazed at the dead body.

Then she spoke, addressing McCall:

"Villain, you have robbed me of my revenge! for by my hand should that
man have fallen. No wrong he could have done you can be more bitter than
that which put me on his death-trail, and made me swear to take his
life.

"Two years ago a young man left a ranch close to the Rio Grande border
with a thousand head of cattle, which had been bought from him, to be
paid for when delivered in Abilene, Kansas. He was noble, brave,
handsome. He was good and true in all things. He was the only hope of a
widowed mother, the very idol of a loving sister, whose life seemed
linked with his. He promised when he left those he loved and who so
loved him that he would hasten back with the proceeds of the sale, and
then, with his mother and sister, he would return to the birthplace of
the three, to the old Northern homestead, where his father's remains
were buried, buy the old estate, and settle down to a qu