CHAPTER XXIX.CONCLUSION.
In the evening of the day he and Dell had visited Chavorta Gorge, Buffalo Bill and his pards reached Sun Dance. There was a pleasant reunion of friends at the supper-table in the Lucky Strike Hotel. Wah-coo-tah formed one of the party, and Mr. and Mrs. Brisco were also there. Hank Tenny, Lonesome Pete, and Hotchkiss had started for Fort Sill in a buckboard, taking the bogus Captain Lawless and the other three prisoners with them. This departure of the prisoners was the opening topic discussed at the table that evening.
The departure of the prisoners led up to the other matters connected with the double stage-robbery, and a general discussion was indulged in, whereby every point that was at all obscured was cleared up to the satisfaction of all.
Mrs. Brisco, it developed, had been taken direct from the scene of the second hold-up to the gully near Medicine Bluff. While she was there, guarded by the three outlaws, Lawless had breathed his last. The terrible experiences Mrs. Brisco had gone through had seemed to her, just as a later event had seemed to her husband, the darkest hour of the night that was to herald the dawn.
“You said, Buffalo Bill,” remarked Gentleman Jim, during the course of the conversation, “that great events sometimes hang on trifling circumstances. Please look at this.”
He drew the memorable locket from his pocket. The trinket had been knocked out of shape, and there was a deep dent in the center.
“When I left here to go to Medicine Bluff with you, Buffalo Bill,” pursued Gentleman Jim, “I put that locket in the breast pocket of my coat. During our fight with the outlaws in the gully, one of the scoundrels fired his revolver at me, pointblank. I felt a shock at my breast, but thought little of it until, when I went to return the locket to Allie, I discovered it in that condition. There was also,” he added, touching the breast of his coat, “this bullet-hole over my heart. Undoubtedly, that locket, which got Allie into so much trouble, squared the account by saving my life.”
“Things turn out thet way sometimes, Gentleman Jim,” said Nomad, “purvidin’ ye hev what we call Cody-luck.”
“Cody-luck has been with us all through our work at Medicine Bluff,” averred James Brisco.
“And in Chavorta Gorge,” supplemented Dell, with a soft look at the scout.
“Especially in Chavorta Gorge,” spoke up De Bray, thinking of his twenty thousand.
“And here’s hoping that Cody-luck will be with the king of scouts and his pards, and with some of the rest of us, as long as we live!” said Brisco.
“Amen to that!” were the words that ran round the board.
But little more remains to be told concerning the work of the king of scouts in and near Sun Dance Cañon.
De Bray looked over the Forty Thieves Mine, pronounced it a bonanza, bought his half-interest and forthwithbegan making the property a heavy producer of the yellow metal. Not only did he enrich himself out of the mine, but he likewise made Wah-coo-tah wealthy. The Indian girl and her Cheyenne mother went to live in a “white man’s town”; Wah-coo-tah was educated, and ultimately married a man of good family.
The man who posed as Captain Lawless and carried out the stage-robberies, it afterward developed, was swayed originally by a desire to get his hands on the Forty Thieves Mine. He and Lawless, it was stated by Tex, had often exchanged parts, finding it easy to do so because of their close resemblance to each other. Who the bogus Lawless was was never discovered. Under his assumed name he was sent to a military prison, along with the other prisoners. Tex, of course, was given his freedom, according to the scout’s promise.
Hawk, the Cheyenne, remained in Sun Dance until Cayuse returned the borrowed pony, then left the camp to pick up his deer-meat and go on to the village of his people.
Dell Dauntless, owing to force of unforeseen circumstances, did not at once return to her Arizona ranch, as she had intended. Fate linked her destiny with that of the scout and his pards for a time longer.
Mr. and Mrs. James Brisco left Sun Dance, and Jim gave up the cards, just as he had told Buffalo Bill he intended doing. They went East, and, as the scout had prophesied, Brisco gave attention to his medical practise, and ultimately became a credit to the community in which he cast his lot.
Forty-five is not an advanced age, and no man is really ever too old to begin retrieving an evil past.
Lonesome Pete and Hank Tenny continued to live andmine in Sun Dance Cañon. Always firm friends, their chief delight, for years after the exciting events herein described, was to meet and live over the doings of Buffalo Bill and his pards, when they had sojourned in the gulch and had run out the trail of Captain Lawless of the Forty Thieves.
THE END.
No. 67 of theBorder Stories, entitled “Buffalo Bill’s Wild Ride,” is a thriller that takes us right over the plains, and makes us feel the wind rushing through our hair, as we ride with the great scout up hill and down dale.
No. 67 of theBorder Stories, entitled “Buffalo Bill’s Wild Ride,” is a thriller that takes us right over the plains, and makes us feel the wind rushing through our hair, as we ride with the great scout up hill and down dale.