two other bands of men were converging to the same
point as fast as they could go. These were a company of United States
troops, guided by Hunky Ben, and a large band of Indians under their
warlike chief Bigfoot.

Jackson, _alias_ Roaring Bull, had once inadvertently given offence to
Bigfoot, and as that chief was both by nature and profession an
unforgiving man he had vowed to have his revenge. Jackson treated the
threat lightly, but his pretty daughter Mary was not quite as
indifferent about it as her father.

The stories of Indian raids and frontier wars and barbarous cruelties
had made a deep impression on her sensitive mind, and when her mother
died, leaving her the only woman at her father's ranch--with the
exception of one or two half-breed women, who could not be much to her
as companions--her life had been very lonely, and her spirit had been
subjected to frequent, though hitherto groundless, alarms.

But pretty Moll, as she was generally called, was well protected, for
her father, besides having been a noted pugilist in his youth, was a
big, powerful man, and an expert with rifle and revolver. Moreover,
there was not a cow-boy within a hundred miles of her who would not (at
least thought he would not) have attacked single-handed the whole race
of Redskins if Moll had ordered him to do so as a proof of affection.

Now, when strapping, good-looking Dick Darvall came to the ranch in the
course of his travels and beheld Mary Jackson, and received the first
broadside from her bright blue eyes, he hauled down his colours and
surrendered with a celerity which would have mightily amused the many
comrades to whom he had said in days of yore that his heart was as hard
as rock, and he had never yet seen the woman as could soften it!

But Dick, more than most of his calling, was a modest, almost a bashful,
man. He behaved to Mary with the politeness that was natural to him,
and with which he would have approached any woman. He did not make the
slightest attempt to show his admiration of her, though it is quite
within the bounds of possibility that his "speaking" brown eyes may have
said something without his permission! Mary Jackson, being also modest
in a degree, of course did not reveal the state of her feelings, and
made no visible attempt to ascertain his, but her bluff sagacious old
father was not obtuse--neither was he reticent. He was a man of the
world--at least of the back-woods world--and his knowledg