Mrs. Whitney was sitting in the gloom, alone in her sorrow. Jennie wished to stay with her, but the mother gently refused, saying she preferred to have none with her. No light was burning in the building, and that night the weather was unusually mild.
Mont Sterry accepted the paper from the hand of his friend and remarked, with a smile:
"I suspect what it is. When the rustlers don't like a man they have a frank way of telling him so, supplemented by a little good advice, I fancy I have been honoured in a similar way."
He deliberately tore open the envelope, while Jennie and her brother looked curiously at him. The moonlight, although strong, was not sufficiently so to show the words, which were written in lead-pencil. Fred Whitney, therefore, struck a match and held it in front of the paper, while the recipient read in a low voice, loud enough, however, to be heard in the impressive hush:
"MONT STERRY: If you stay in the Powder River country twenty-four
hours longer you are a dead man. Over fifty of us rustlers have
sworn to shoot you on sight, whether it is at Fort McKinley,
Buffalo, or on the streets of Cheyenne. I have persuaded the
majority to hold off for the time named, but not one of them will
do so an hour longer, nor will I ask them to do so. We are bound
to make an honest living, and it is weak for me to give you this
warning, but I do it, repeating that if you are within reach
twenty-four hours from the night on which this is handed to
Whitney I will join them in hunting you down, wherever you may be.
"LARCH CADMUS."
CHAPTER VIII. — GOOD-BYE.
Monteith Sterry read the "warning" through in a voice without the slightest tremor. Then he quietly smoked his cigar and looked off in the moonlight, as though thinking of something of a different nature.
It was natural that Jennie Whitney should be more impressed by the occurrence, with the memory of the recent tragedy crushing her to the earth. She exclaimed: