threw her arms about his
tall and splendid form, and kissed him again and again with passionate
tenderness.

"Do be careful of your life, dear Bill," she said. "You are all in all
to me. If you perish, life will be valueless to me."

"Addie, I'll try to live for your sake, and work my uttermost to achieve
what will give you and me peace and quiet in the end. Good-night, once
more good-night, my beautiful, my own."

"Good night, Bill--God bless you!" she sobbed; as she turned her horse,
and followed the Texan at a gallop.

CHAPTER VIII.
FOILED BY A WOMAN.

It was their last night in town before breaking up camp, and the Black
Hillers, as they already called themselves, under Chichester, were
determined to have a lively time of it.

They commenced "wetting up," or pouring down liquid lightning in camp,
but, being reminded that what they used there would be missed on their
journey, they started to skin the saloons in town, and finish out their
spree where it would not diminish their own stores.

As Wild Bill said, they were going where money would be of little
account, if all the stories about the gold to be found were true; so
what they spent now they wouldn't have to carry. And they went in, as
such reckless men generally do, spending their money as freely as they
could, and drinking with a "looseness" that promised headaches on the
morrow, if nothing more.

Wild Bill went in on the spree with a rush, as if he wished to drown the
remembrance of his late fright, and despite the cautions of his friend,
Captain Jack, who strove hard to keep him within bounds.

California Joe of course was in his element, and in a little while all
the party became so turbulent that Crawford left them in disgust. For,
as Addie Neidic had said of him, despite his associations, he was a
gentleman.

By midnight every saloon had been visited, and many of them pretty well
cleaned out, and now Bill proposed to go and break a faro bank that some
of the party spoke of.

"I have seven hundred dollars left out of a thousand my woman gave me
before I started," said he. "I'll lose that, or break the bank; see if I
don't."

All of the party who were sober enough went with Bill, and soon he was
before the green board.

Without even waiting to get the run of the game, be planked a hundred
dollars on the king, and lost. Without a word, he put two hundred
dollars more on the same card, and won. He left the four hundred down,
and in anothe