Had he caught her, a horrible fate would have been hers. Smarting under the wound she had given him—for the bullet had lodged in his shoulder—he was in the right mood to wreak vengeance.
But he failed to find her.
There was no sign of her at the cabin, no indication that she had been there—in fact, the servants declared that she had not been there.
Back he started, and had gone but a little way when he met his men coming, and he scattered them all to look for the missing young woman, with orders to take her dead or alive.
They went out by the various trails—rather possible avenues, for there were no trails proper there, but they failed to find her. And when Captain Joaquin and two of the men came out at the place where Dick had been hanged, they found his body swaying to and fro in the breeze.
Nor was she found. And when, later on in the night, others of the band came in in haste with certain intelligence concerning the sheriff and his posse, Captain Joaquin deserted his cabin and took to the hills, and was not seen in that section again. On the following day the cabin was discovered and looted and burned, but the birds had flown.
Meanwhile, Deadwood Dick, with Susana, was making his way to the south, keeping to the hills in order not to be discovered.
Dick wanted it to appear that he was dead.
He learned enough from Susana to give him a suspicion as to what Captain Joaquin would do, and he felt that he could afford to give him time.
They crossed the border into Mexico, where Dick quietly rested for a season to recover his full measure of health and strength, and where Susana was his devoted slave and companion.