s ice on my soul! I've never felt right since I
pulled on that red-haired Texan at Abilene, in Kansas. You remember, for
you was there. It was kill or get killed, you know, and when I let him
have his ticket for a six-foot lot of ground he gave one shriek--it
rings in my ears yet. He spoke but one word--'Sister!' Yet that word has
never left my ears, sleeping or waking, from that time to this. I had a
sister once myself, Sam, and I loved her a thousand times more than I
did life. In fact I never loved life after I lost her. And I can't tell
you all about her--I'd choke if I tried. It is enough that she died, and
the cause of her death died soon after, and I wasn't far away when--when
he went under. But that isn't here nor there, Sam--let's go and warm up.
Where do you hang out?"

"I'm in camp close by. I'm heading a party that is bound in for the
Black Hills. Captain Jack Crawford is along. You know him. And
California Joe, too."

"Good! It is the first streak of luck I've had in a year. I'll join your
crowd, Sam, if you'll let me. Captain Jack and Joe are as good friends
as I ever had--always barring one."

"And that is?"

"My old six-shooter here. Truth-Teller I call it. It never speaks
without saying something. But come, old boy--I see a sign ahead. I must
take in a little benzine to wash the car-dust out of my throat."

Bill pointed to a saloon near at hand, and the two old scouts and
companions moved toward it.

As they did so, a young man, roughly dressed, with a face fair and
smooth, though shadowed as if by exposure to sun and and wind, stepped
from behind a shade tree, where he had stood while these two talked,
listening with breathless interest to every word. His hair, a deep, rich
auburn, hung in curling masses clear to his shoulders, and his blue eyes
seemed to burn with almost feverish fire as he gazed in the direction
the scouts had taken.

"So! He remembers Abilene, does he?"

And the tone of the young man was low and fierce us an angered serpent's
hiss.

"And he thinks his time is near. So do I. But he shall not die in a
second, as his victim did, I would prolong his agonies for years, if
every hour was like a living death; a speechless misery. Let him go with
Sam Chichester and his crowd. The avenger will be close at hand! His
Truth-Teller will lie when he most depends on it. For I--I have sworn
that he shall go where he has sent so many victims; go, like them all,
unprepared, but not unwarn