He broke open the letter and began to read--
Henniker City, Dakota, 14th July, 1876.
Dear Rupe,--Seems to me you"re fixed up pretty tight and snug, after "baching" around all these years. My respects to Madam.
May be you"ll not be sorry to hear I"ve sold your interest in the Burntwood Creek Mine to a New York Syndicate for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and five hundred fully paid-up shares in the new Co.
If you weren"t so keen on settling down in Great Britain again I reckon this find would make you more than a millionaire. However, I"ve banked the specie here, where it"ll be safe enough till you undertake to ship it to Great Britain--safe enough, that is, while I"m Sheriff of Henniker City--though they did "hold up" the bank in Jabez Humbold"s time.
The pesky Sioux are still on the war-path, as I judge you"ll have learned even in Great Britain, but they"re in a fair way of being soundly whipped. And now I"ve got to tell you what you"ll be dead sorry to hear.
Yseulte, watching her husband"s face, marked the change that came into it, as he turned the sheet and glanced hurriedly down it. A terrible frown--a frown similar to that which she had seen there when, dismounted and alone, he had turned to face the savage pursuers at the entrance of the canon that never-to-be-forgotten evening of her escape. Mastering himself, he continued to read:
Your old pard, Smokestack Bill, is rubbed out. He fell at the Little Bighorn with Custer and his command, and I reckon the red devils have had many a dance round his hair by this time. Poor Bill! I allow it"s kinder rough when men have been pardners all the years you and he have; but he fell in fair fight, and that"s better, as he himself would allow, than dying of a slow sickness, or being knifed in the back by some slinking wall-eyed rowdy in a saloon. Well, well! There wasn"t a straighter, stauncher, all-round man, nor a better scout on this continent than Smokestack Bill, and if so be as any man says there was, why he"ll be ill-advised to make the remark anywhere around this section. I judge that"s about all the news you"ll care for just now, and with my respects to Madam, now as ever, old hoss, your sincere:
Nathaniel J. Hardroper, Sheriff of Henniker City.
For some time Rupert Vallance stared vacantly at the hateful paper in dead silence. All the stirring experiences they had gone through together crowded upon his mind, and the fate of his friend, staunch, unswerving, true as steel, moved him more than he cared to show, even to his wife.
"Ah, well!" he said at last, laying down the letter with a sigh. "It"s bitterly rough on a fellow. For upwards of a dozen years we"ve chummed together like twin brothers, in tight fixes and out of them, and now the poor chap"s wiped out. Yes, it"s rough!" An arm stole round his neck.
"Darling, can I forget that the n.o.ble, unselfish fellow saved your life and brought you back to me! And don"t think me unfeeling, but if I had never gone out there you might be lying there too, at this moment, having shared the poor fellow"s terrible fate."
"That"s so," he a.s.sented. "I hadn"t thought of it in that light."
The End.