iet and a happy
life. Long, anxiously, and prayerfully did that mother and sister wait
for his return. Did he come? No; but the soul-blighting news came,
which, like a thunderbolt, struck that mother--my mother--dead! Wild and
despairing, I heard it--heard _this._

"The son, the brother, who never used a drop of strong drink in all his
life; who never uttered an oath, or raised a hand in unkindness to man
or woman, had been murdered--killed without provocation--no chance to
defend his life, no warning to prepare for another world--shot down in
mere wantonness. There lies the body of him who did it. Do you wonder
that, over my dead mother's body, girl though I was, I swore to follow
to the death him who killed my brother? It is not my fault that I have
not kept my oath. I would have done it had I known that you, his
friends, would have torn me limb from limb before his body was cold."

"And served him right!" said an old miner, whose eyes were dimmed with
moisture while the Texan girl told her story.

"Where is McCall? His act was murder," cried Sam Chichester.

"He has sloped, but I'll take his trail, and if there is law in Montana
he shall hang," said California Joe, who bounded from the house, when it
was discovered that the murderer had slipped away in the moment of
excitement.

How well California Joe kept his promise, history has already recorded.
Followed over many a weary mile of hill and prairie, McCall was finally
arrested, tried and convicted, as well by his own boast as the evidence
of others, and he was hanged.

But one glance at our heroine, for such the red-haired Texan is.

With a look of haughty defiance, she asked:

"Have I done aught that requires my detention here?"

"No," said Captain Jack; "thank Heaven you have not. We'd make a poor
fist at trying a woman by Lynch law, if you had done what you meant to."

"Then I go, and few will be the white faces I ever see again!" she
cried.

The next moment she passed out, and as the crowd followed to see whither
she went, she was seen to spring on a coal-black horse which stood
unhitched before the door, and on it she rode at wild speed away toward
the north-west, while a saddled but unridden mustang followed close
behind her.

The course she took led toward the regions where Sitting Bull, in force,
awaited the attack of the soldiers then on his trail.

[THE END.]

"DIAMOND DICK, JR'S TRUNK CHECK; or, THE MAN IN THE SILVER MASK," by W.
B, L