Ted Strong in Montana / Or, With Lariat and Spur

by Edward C. Taylor

A LETTER FROM THE DEAD.

Ted was brooding over the appearance of Farnsworth, and the startling events which followed, and particularly the crime at Rodeo, of which the young fellow had fallen under suspicion.

Ted believed that Farnsworth was innocent of the crime.

But his flight from the town, and the question he had put to Ted when they met in the road, as to whether Ted had heard the news from Rodeo, were enough to convict him in the mind of any person prone to suspicion.

But Ted looked at matters of this sort differently than most people. In the first place, his experience had taught him that actions which seemed most suspicious often proved most innocent.

That Farnsworth knew of the murder of Helen Mowbray before he quitted Rodeo his question to Ted left no doubt, and the shadow of suspicion under which he had lived was reason enough for him to leave the town before its discovery. He knew the dangerous temper of the people, and that it would take very little to arouse them against him, and precipitate them into a lynching, with himself as the central figure.

Ted had heard that Fancy Farnsworth was the worst man in Arizona, and that he had the most ungovernable temper, the quickest eye, and swiftest "draw" of a gun in the Territory.

He was a gambler against whom nobody seemed to be able to cope, for he invariably won. It had been said that he was not a straight gambler, but those who said it did so only once, as they were incapable of saying it twice, for by that time they had been shot full of holes by the card sharper.

Why it was that Farnsworth always escaped punishment at the hands of the authorities no one knew, except that they lacked the nerve to force prosecution against him, and that he invariably had a good excuse for killing a man; at least, one that made good in that rough country, where every man was of a size because all carried revolvers.

But even while Ted believed that Farnsworth was innocent of the murder of Miss Mowbray, he felt that some day he and the dashing young fellow would meet on the battlefield as enemies.