here he first went after leavin' home. An' here
I got track of Milly. I found a cabin where she had given birth to her
baby. There was no way to tell whether she'd been kept a prisoner or
not. The feller who owned the place was a mean, silent sort of a skunk,
an' as I was leavin' I jest took a chance an' left my mark on him. Then
I went home again.

"It was to find I hadn't any home, no more. Father had been dead a year.
Frank Erne still lived in the house where Milly had left him. I stayed
with him awhile, an' I grew old watchin' him. His farm had gone to weed,
his cattle had strayed or been rustled, his house weathered till it
wouldn't keep out rain nor wind. An' Frank set on the porch and whittled
sticks, an' day by day wasted away. There was times when he ranted about
like a crazy man, but mostly he was always sittin' an' starin' with eyes
that made a man curse. I figured Frank had a secret fear that I needed
to know. An' when I told him I'd trailed Milly for near three years an'
had got trace of her, an' saw where she'd had her baby, I thought he
would drop dead at my feet. An' when he'd come round more natural-like
he begged me to give up the trail. But he wouldn't explain. So I let him
alone, an' watched him day en' night.

"An' I found there was one thing still precious to him, an' it was a
little drawer where he kept his papers. This was in the room where he
slept. An' it 'peered he seldom slept. But after bein' patient I got the
contents of that drawer an' found two letters from Milly. One was a long
letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been bound
an' gagged an' dragged away from her home by three men, an' she named
them--Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was strangers to her. She was taken
to the little town where I found trace of her two years after. But she
didn't send the letter from that town. There she was penned in. 'Peared
that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the scene, was not
runnin' any risks of losin' her. She went on to say that for a time
she was out of her head, an' when she got right again all that kept
her alive was the baby. It was a beautiful baby, she said, an' all she
thought an' dreamed of was somehow to get baby back to its father, an'
then she'd thankfully lay down and die. An' the letter ended abrupt, in
the middle of a sentence, en' it wasn't signed.

"The second letter was written more than two years after the first. It
was from Salt Lake City. It simpl