"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 mystery.
Somehow, away down in his heart, he did not believe that the man with the silver mask was dead, but that he would some day meet him again and solve the mystery that surrounded him.
In the early part of December, however, the members of the Moon Valley outfit left the Long Tom Ranch for Phoenix, Arizona.