the tents the flap of one of them was pushed back and
the young woman came out.

Her hand was raised for silence, and the tears were coursing down her
cheeks.

"Hush!" she said. "He is dead."

"Who is dead?" asked Ted, with the greatest respect.

"Silver Face," was the answer.

"Who was he?" asked Ted.

"I don't know. I found him lying in the mountains almost dead from an
accident a few months ago, and nursed him back to life, but he never
spoke again, and he has never been able to let me know who he was."

"Pardon me, but who are you?" asked Ted.

"I?" said the woman, drawing herself up proudly. "I am Whipple."

"What? Leader of the Whipple gang?" asked Ted, almost incredulously.

"The same," said she. "I have laughed many times at the fear I inspired
among you ranchmen in the valley, and the officers of the law, to say
nothing of the soldiers. But that was because they had never seen me,
and believed me to be a man."

They all looked their astonishment, for she was an exceedingly pretty
woman, and spoke in gentle tones.

"But it is all over now," she continued sadly. "If those steers and
ponies are yours, take them. I am going to leave the mountains, and my
men are scattered and will leave also. I told them to go. And now that
Silver Face is no more, there is no reason why I should stay here."

"You loved him?" asked Ted, nodding toward the tent.

"Yes," she answered quietly. "He was my husband. When I had nursed him
back to life I sent my boys out and kidnaped a preacher. I had him
brought here blindfolded, and made him marry us, then sent him back, not
knowing where he had been."

Ted and the boys looked their sympathy.

"Can I be of any assistance to you in caring for him?" asked Stella,
very sweetly.

A look of terror crossed the woman's face.

"No, no," she cried. "Leave me with my dead. Take what belongs to you
and go."

She retired into the tent, and they heard her weeping, and turned away.

The boys started immediately on the back trail to the ranch, where they
arrived with their cattle and ponies.

That was the last of the Whipple gang, for the members of it left the
country, and the outlaw Indians were gathered in by the troops and the
Indian police, and imprisoned on the reservations.

But on winter evenings, as he sat before the big fire in the Long Tom
ranch house, his big snow camp, Ted Strong often turned over in his mind
the facts about the death of Silver Face, the man of