Having made up his mind, Old Jack went to each horse and patted his strong neck affectionately. They had been fast friends as beast and master, and there was a warm corner in the old man’s heart for each.

He had just unharnessed them from the stage in which he had carried Deadly Dan to Custer City.

He felt that his time had come, as he left Custer and urged his horse toward Cut-throat Canyon. He had long believed, in secret, that his old pard, Tom Terror, was the leader of the Thugs that infested the famous pass; he was confident of it now, and it would be safe to say that, as he rode along, his neck did not itch as formerly.

Three hours had scarcely passed since his encounter with Tom, therefore he expected to find him near the spot where he had stopped the stage.

Whatever the feeling of security that quieted the deserter’s spirits, he drew his pistols as his horse entered the shades of Cut-throat, and then, applying the heavy Mexican spurs which he had strapped to his heels, he went down the canyon like a fugitive from justice.

“Hyar I am, but no Tom,” he said, drawing rein on the spot where he had had his adventure with the Gulch Tiger.

“Hyar’s whar he told me about the bonanza thet beats the Emma King, an’ thar is whar I stood on the tongue an’ listened till I saw Old Jack drivin’ a golden carriage through the streets ov ’Frisco. Why didn’t you wait hyar fur me, Tom? You might hev knowed thet I’d come back jist as quick as I could unhitch, an’ say goodbye to the hosses. Tom, pard, whar ar’ ye?”

He had mentally resolved to go back to his horses when a sound that made him turn, saluted his ears.

“Ah! Tom, you did come!” he exclaimed, for the Gulch Tiger sat before him as natural as life.

“I didn’t think you would come back,” was the answer.

“Not for a share in your bonanza?”

“Mebbe I war fooling you, Jack.”

The old driver’s countenance fell.

“Foolin’ me—Old Jack, yer pard?” the old fellow said dazedly. “I’ve left the route, desarted my hosses, turned my back on Custer—for a share in the big bonanza that beats the Emma King—”

Tom Terror laughed.

Jack gritted his teeth; that cruel cachinnation sent the last bird of hope screaming from his avaricious heart. It dissipated his dream of gold.

“Tom, you don’t mean all thet thet laugh said,” Jack cried. “Is thar really no bonanza—”

“Thar’s one for every man, but he must get it for himself,” was the interruption as heartless as the laugh.

The rough hand of Jack Drivewell had glided to the revolver that rested at his right thigh, but his eye was fixed on the figure before him.

“Hold on, Jack! Draw that weapon and you’ll hunt for bonanza in a kentry where they don’t hev any,” said the Canyon Thug, sternly, as the driver’s hand touched the butt of his pistol. “Go back to the road and you’ll strike one some day.”

“I can’t do thet, Tom. I’ve left the road. From this night I’m Old Jack, the Bonanza Hunter.”

The reply of the Gulch Tiger was the lifting of his right hand.

“Thet’s the signal!” went through Jack’s brain.

Ay, signal it was.

Suddenly, through the air came the whirr of that deadly missile whose work we have already seen.

Jack instinctively threw up his hand, but too late.

The fatal coil struck his meager length of throat, and the leaden ball revolving with great rapidity drew it tighter and tighter at each revolution.

Old Jack saw the Canyon Tiger fade into indistinctness; darkness came down the sides of the gulch like a descending pall; he reeled and tried to shriek. Rising in his heavy stirrups, he clutched the deadly cord, and attempted to tear it from his throat.

Tom turned away, and several Indian-like figures leaped from the shadows.

“Finish ’im!” the Tiger said.

The three Canyon Wolves darted toward the writhing man, and the foremost fired point-blank at him with a revolver.

Old Jack’s hand dropped from the cord, and his horse sprung forward. Then bang! bang went two more pistols, as the pebbles were loosened by the iron-shod feet, and the victim of the Thugs disappeared from view.

“But if Old Jack Drivewell gets over it, there’ll be a general settlement one of these days in Cut-throat Canyon. Now listen to me: we encountered a boy an’ a gal last night. You gave the beauty the string, but the boy got away. He is the chap I am looking for. Mind you, I am to settle with him. If you catch him—and catch him you must—you shall bring him to me. Do you understand?”

“We hear our chief,” said Lodgepole. “He shall give the boy the cord.”

“That is it,” cried Tom, delightedly. “We understand each other now.”

“And I understand you all, monsters!”

Quick as thought every Thug turned his face upward, for the voice had come from the star-kissing cliffs overhead.

The next instant a wild cry leaped from the throats of all, and the Thugs dodged shudderingly.

As for Tom Terror, he fairly shrieked as he ducked his unhandsome head, and the next second a stone which would have crushed a giant grazed his hat and was shivered on the bed of the canyon.

“Great Jove! missed by a hair!” gasped the Tiger, and the spurring that he administered to his horse carried him many rods from the almost fatal spot.

Then, white-faced and gasping, he drew rein, and looked up at the cliffs overhead.

“It warn’t the boy,” he said. “The voice didn’t sound like a human one. I’d call it a speerit, if speerits could handle sich rocks as that. Whar ar’ the boys with the strings?”

“Here, chief.”

Tom Terror looked; his band actually surrounded him.

“We must get away from here, for we can’t dodge sich bullets every time,” he said.

“No, monsters! the time is near at hand when they will strike and kill.”

“Great Jehosaphat!” ejaculated the Canyon Terror. “Thar’s vengeance and death in that voice. I recognize it now, though I only heard it once. It ar’ the voice of the girl who war with the boy last night—the girl what got the string.”

The red Thugs did not answer; but their gaze wandered from their chief to the top of the canyon wall.

The horse that carried Old Jack from the spot where Tom Terror had sacrificed him to the deadly cords of his inhuman miscreants, dashed through the canyon at the top of his speed.

Unconscious and bleeding the bonanza-hunter lay, corpse-like, on the strong neck underneath which his rough hands were tightly clasped.

Out into the soft moonlight beyond the mouth of the gulch, went the animal with undiminished speed down the road to Custer until, having galloped through the woe-begone suburbs of the mining-town, he was checked by several iron hands before the hotel.

Flecked with foam, wild-eyed and panting heavily, the steed elicited a thousand ejaculations of wonder and surprise. The excited men, a score of whom belonged to Maverick Joe’s Vigilantes, felt that the demons of Cut-throat had sent the horse on his awful gallop, and the marks of the cord, still visible on the driver’s neck, confirmed their belief.

But what had taken Old Jack from the stage stables so soon after his arrival?

They carried him into the bar-room and examined his wounds. They found a bullet-hole in the right breast and a furrow in his neck, as if the last pellet had actually cut the fatal string loose.

Old Jack was subjected to some rough surgery, but it had the desired effect. He opened his eyes in the midst of the rough crowd burning to question him.

“What took me to Cut-throat?” he said. “Mebbe I dropped a valuable package from the stage. Would ye believe thet?”

“No!” said Maverick Joe, a little man, wiry, dark-faced and with eyes full of fox-like cunning. “You don’t lose freight in Cut-throat, Jack. Suthin’ else took you down thar.”

“Suthin’ else did,” confessed Jack. “But I didn’t get it.”

“Who did you see?”

“Old Tom.”

The crowd started.

“He’s come back as big as life, an’ as onery as ever.”

Maverick Joe stepped hack. His little eyes were burning like twin stars.

“Tom Terror has come back. Do you hear that, boys?”

The Vigilantes had heard, and as they gathered around their leader, the air seemed to become blue with oaths and threats of vengeance.

Maverick Joe walked through the crowd with a determined purpose written on his countenance. Twenty eager men were at his heels.

The men separated, each to saddle his horse.

Maverick Joe re-entered the hotel; but the place where Old Jack had lain was vacant.

“They took him down to his horses,” explained a man. “He’s got a bed there, and you know the stable is as good as many a house in Custer. He got delirious after you went out and raved about a bonanza bigger than the Emma King. It must have had something to do with his trip to Cut-throat, for he mixed Tom Terror and the big bonanza together all the time.”

The captain of the Vigilantes went out, and bent his steps toward Old Jack’s stable.

Maverick Joe paused at the door and listened; but, not hearing any noise, he went in.

A lantern that hung on a nail afforded the light that revealed the interior. It showed the Vigilante the roughest kind of low cot, sitting bolt upright in which was the old driver. Maverick Joe stopped at the sight.

Jack’s eyes were bloody fierce and wolfish; they rolled restlessly in their cavernous sockets, and told the Vigilante that the old man was at that moment wrestling with death.

“I’ll strike it yet. Afore Old Jack pushes in his last chips, he’ll get his hands on two things—Tom’s throat and the big bonanza. Jack Drivewell, the stage-driver, ar’ dead! but outen his ashes, phenix-like, he’s risen Old Jack the throat-hunter, and bonanza king.”

“You don’t want me along!—thet’s it! The bonanza is to be divided, eh?” the wild man had stopped and turned upon Joe; but the next moment he leaped forward, and the two men clutching, staggered through an avenue beside the stall and rolled among the horses’ feet.

It was a struggle for life in the dark, for the partition of heavy boards that rose between them and Jack’s sleeping-room shut off all light from the lantern.

For several moments the two men writhed and struggled there, then the door opened and Maverick Joe came out.

“I had to do it!” he groaned. “May Heaven have mercy on his soul and mine! but nobody heard the rumpus. Never mind, Jack; I’ll find the throat you wanted, and, with that big bonanza, if it was not a merely a creation of a crazy head, I’ll build you a monument that’ll make yer speerit proud.”

The Vigilantes’ captain did not tarry.

If he had looked into the little room of the stable-home, still dimly lighted by the dusty lantern, he would have seen an inanimate form stretched upon the rumpled cot.

“Hyar’s the cap’n,” cried a score of voices, and Maverick Joe, roused by the sounds, found himself in the midst of his Vigilantes.

The men had been waiting for their leader, and in less than five minutes he placed himself at their head, mounted on his trusted horse Bonanza.

“I’m afraid Old Jack’s dead,” said the Vigilante captain. “Boys, we’ve got to avenge him. Tom Terror is back; he gave Jack his last dose. Think of this boys.”

He got the desired response, oaths of vengeance and looks of eternal hatred.

The band that galloped toward Cut-throat knew every pebble that lay in the road. The Vigilantes went cautiously into the gulch; they glided among its shadows; they waited for their prey at different places with their fingers on their trigger.

“Nothing hyar,” said Maverick Joe, disappointedly, after an hour’s waiting at a certain point. “The game has slipped us for to-night. We must come ag’in. Lilly, Antenat and Moravy, you will remain in Cut-throat. We will go back and bury Old Jack.”

It was with reluctance that the Vigilantes fell in line behind their leader. They must, perforce, give up the hunt for that night.

“Won’t we give Jack a grand plantin’?”

Maverick Joe looked at the handsome young Vigilante who rode at his side.

“Ay, we’ll plant him well, Harry. I wish we could please ’im by burying Tom’s throat and the big bonanza in the same grave.”

“That bonanza business must have been imagination,” answered the young man.

“Maybe so,” said Joe, half-musingly. “But I’ve been thinking since I left Jack. Did you ever hear of that rumor?”

“About the girl, cap’n?”

“Yes. People don’t talk about it much now. Jack used to talk about it. I recollect one night that he sat up till three—it was in his stable—talking about the woman that he eloped with away down among the States. Old Jack used to be a good-looking young man, and not very long ago either.”

“Oh, I never heard about the elopement,” exclaimed the young Vigilante quickly. “What has that to do with the lost girl?”

“A good deal if Jack told the truth. You see, Harry, Jack’s wife was rich—her father had lots of the lumps—but she took up with Jack. Of course they had to run away, and the old man cut the girl off and cursed her besides. They had one child—a girl. She was born somewhere in Sacramento Valley. Jack and his wife showed that they could be as contrary as the old man. One day, five years after the elopement, a letter came from Jennie’s father; but she spunked up and chucked it into the fire without opening it. What war in it nobody knows. It war the last one thet come. Jack said thet night in his stable thet he would give his right arm—and it war his business arm, too, to know what thet letter said. But the fire had cindered it. To make a long story short, Harry, Jennie died a year after thet, and Jack loaned his baby girl to an old pard, who went under the time the Feather Injuns got on their ears and killed everybody.”

“But the girl—Jack’s baby?”

“Thet’s the mystery. Sometimes Jack used to say that his little Jennie war dead, and then he would think that, after all, he would see her agin. He would say that a big pile of money was coming to her. And now he is dead, Harry, what is your opinion of that big bonanza which filled his mind at the last moments? Mightn’t it mean more than imagination?”

The young Vigilante admitted that Maverick Joe might be right.

“I really wish he warn’t dead,” and the captain spoke with a deep sigh.

“May be he isn’t,” said Harry, a ray of hope lighting up his eyes.

“I guess all ar’ gone—Jack, little Jennie, the big bonanza—all! And no man in Colorado hates it more than Maverick Joe.”

The man looked up as he spoke; they were nearly out of the gulch; a few rods further on and the gray streaks of dawn would burst upon them from the far-away horizon, cloudless and gray.

But, all at once, in tones that startled both horse and rider, rung out a single word:

“Halt!”

Reins and revolvers were instantly drawn.

“Form into single rank, an’ come on!” continued the same voice, which came from between two outstretched pistols. “I intend to hunt the big bonanza myself, and the throat of Tiger Tom is my property; it is not to be let out in shares. I’ve staked my claim, and I’m goin’ to work it alone. Form into single rank, an’ ride by. The first hand that goes up, drops.”

Maverick Joe, despite his courage, almost fell against his young companion.

His followers had also recognized the specter with the pistols.

It was Old Jack, the driver, but he looked more like a corpse than a man in whose breast a heart was beating.

“Single file!” said Maverick Joe, glancing at his Vigilantes. “Death is at the old fellow’s heart-strings. He doesn’t know what he’s doin’. Let no man touch ’im.”

At the head of his men, the Vigilante of Custer moved forward. Chilled with terror, they all hugged the canyon wall, nor breathed until they had passed the apparition.

Beyond the specter Maverick Joe drew rein.

“Great rocks and the gods! did you all notice ’im?” he exclaimed, turning to his men.

“He is dead, stone dead!” said several. “Look! there he sits yet! just as we passed ’im. He’ll tumble off when his horse moves.”

The band looked back, and saw the occupant of the pass, motionless, like an equestrian statue in brass.

But suddenly the silence was broken.

“Now for the bonanza. Hurrah! for the claim what hes but one big share!”

Then the ghostly horse shot forward, and the white-faced men who looked, saw him carry his death-touched rider out of sight.

To return to the boy Vigilante and his prisoner.

The words that we have recorded as they fell from the youth’s lips, told Deadly Dan that his life was in imminent peril.

His arms had been pinioned at his sides, and Red Crest, the Sioux, trotted at his horse’s head.

“Where is this self-styled court where you are popularly supposed to administer justice?” sneered the captive Sport, unable to curb his feelings and impatience longer. He had turned upon the boy avenger to whose temples a flush of indignation mounted.

“We are almost there,” was the answer. “You are not expecting mercy at our hands?”

“I don’t ask any,” was the mad retort.

“You were going to grant me much that night in the camp on the Rosebud when Red Crest interfered.”

Deadly Dan shot a look of anger at the Indian which was returned with interest.

“Of course not,” he said, answering his young interlocutor. “If you know what I do, boy, maybe you wouldn’t blame me for wanting your life—that is, if you were in my place, and had my nature.”

The eyes of Judge Lynch, Jr., dilated with astonishment; he glanced quickly at Red Crest as if fearful that the Sioux was listening. But such did not seem to be the case.

“What do you mean?” he ejaculated, without second thought, but the derisive smile that came to Dan’s lips quickly told him that he had been too precipitate.

“Ha! wouldn’t you like to know?” whispered Deadly Dan, leaning toward his captor. “You know that there is some secret connected with your life; you must believe that I am the possessor of it, but I can not think that you are fool—idiot enough to dream that I am going to divulge it. Do you think I will, judge?”

The boy could but notice the triumphant twinkle in his prisoner’s eyes.

“A secret about me?” he asked himself. “This is the third time I have heard such hints,” and while he thought, his look told Dan how wolfishly the insatiable demon curiosity was gnawing at his heart-strings.

He did not notice that they had entered Cut-throat, so intently was he gazing into the handsome young face revealed by the soft moonlight.

“We are here,” fell suddenly from the Indian’s lips, and the boy, throwing a hasty glance around, replied:

“Indeed, we have reached our court. Rosebud, in all your travels have you ever seen such a temple of justice?”

The last words roused him. He started like a captive who forgets that he is bound.

Red Crest was standing on the ground with a noose in his hands. Eagerness seemed to be devouring the Indian.

“Are you ready, Dan?—no praying—no last words?”

“None, but to tell you, boy, that you’re hanging a man who can throw at your feet the biggest bonanza that ever existed.”

“Going back to the lie, eh—to the secret you have made up? Ha! I thought you would beg at the last moment.”

“Beg! who’s begging?” was the flashing reply. “Dan Darrell never begged for his life. He has told the truth. As he is shortly to appear some place, beyond this planet—just where he can’t say—but somewhere before a great Judge, he swears that there is a secret connected with your life.”

Judge Lynch, Jr., bent forward and peered into the man’s face.

Honesty was written there in characters which no eye could misjudge. The boy judge trembled; he seemed to feel that he had reached one of the most momentous periods of his life.

And he was about to hang the possessor of some important secret. The thought worried him.

“Dan, tell me. It will be the last act of your life, and one which you will not be ashamed to offer to the majestic Judge before whom you are about to appear.”

If the boy had tried to suppress these words he would have failed. They forced themselves to his lips.

Deadly Dan did not move a muscle. He merely shot a rapid glance at the gallows overhead, and then permitted his eye to follow the rope to the noose in Red Crest’s hand.

“For the last time, boy, I say, proceed with the execution.”

A groan of disappointment fell from the young judge’s lips; but it was quickly followed by a stern command.

“Now fix the noose, Red Crest.”

Almost before the last word had left his tongue, the Indian’s hand executed an upward move and the noose of the strong lariat dropped over Dan’s head, and was tightened with a jerk.

Then the other end of the cord was fastened to the girth of the horse which the prisoner rode, and Red Crest stepped back, his work evidently done.

It was a moment fraught with the most intense interest.

The young Jeffries looked at his prisoner, and caught his eye.

It was fearless, defiant, and bright.

For several moments the twain fought the silent eye battle, then the boy withdrew from the contest.

“Good-by, Rosebud,” he said. “If we ever meet again, it will be when I come after my rope.”

The next instant the word “Avenger!” sharply spoken, fell from the youth’s lips, and the captive’s horse leaped forward, startled by the sudden blow of Red Crest’s tomahawk handle.

Suddenly Deadly Dan was jerked from his saddle, and as his horse bounded away he shot up into space like an ascending rocket, actually hung by his own horse.

Not far away the animal executioner had stopped. The rope that led from his girth to the beam above was tightly stretched, far from the other end hung the body of the Wolf of the Rosebud.

One-half of his figure was in the moonlight, the rest swayed to and fro in the shadow of the beam.

Judge Lynch, Jr., sprung to the ground, and with Red Crest’s help loosened the lengthy lasso which they again made fast, but this time to a large rock at the foot of the canyon wall.

Then the Indian leaped upon the horse just relieved from duty, and the two prepared to gallop away.

“A last good-by, Rosebud,” said the boy judge, looking at the ghastly figure above.

“Good-by, trailer,” said Red Crest, waving a farewell salute with his red hand. “No burning lodges on the trail that leads to the land of the Evil Spirit. Good-by, bad brother!”

“Good-by, devils!”

Whence came that voice? Or was it but an infernal echo from the shadows overhead?

Instinctively the twain looked into each other’s faces.

Both had heard the startling words.

“Who is up yonder?” queried the white boy.

“No, no! ’tis the voice of the dead Wolf! Come, brother. Red Crest has heard the spirits that speak in the gulches of the Rosebud. They foller him here. If we ride like the storm, they cannot catch us.”

And the next moment the Sioux urged his horse forward, and left his young companion to follow at his leisure.

“Somebody has witnessed the hanging,” he said. “But, never mind! the deed is done, and the villain, who basely attempted my life on the Rosebud, will never lift another knife, or burn another town.”

Then he rode under the suspended man, and rejoined the Indian.

The two went down the canyon together.