“Reckon I’ll pay you a visit, Aaron,” he said to himself. “And right soon, too. I may be dead, but I’ll put the fear of hell into your miserable old carcass. You’ll be thinkin’ of somethin’ else besides who you are goin’ to marry.”
Johnny’s one brief glance at Molly had shown him the girl tired, grief-stricken, hysterical. He wanted to tell her, now more than ever, that he lived; but to do so meant the loss of his best weapon against Kent and Gallup. Better for her to suffer now than to be forced into marrying Aaron Gallup.
Thoughts of Crosbie Traynor came to Johnny as he rode along. What had old Thunder Bird found out? The chief would have something to say when next they met.
“Strikes me we got quite a lot in common, Crosbie Traynor,” mused Johnny. “The world’s got both of us figured for dead. Only I’m alive to avenge myself.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE FACE IN THE WINDOW
Johnny surprised Charlie Paul on the following day by telling him that they were going to Standing Rock.
“Me still dead man,” the boy said in answer to the question in the Indian’s eyes. “We stop this side the Rock. Nobody there know I be in your camp. Mebbe so, come night time, we go into town, play ghost, mebbe scare some man, eh?”
Charlie grinned and shook his head. “Ah, nah,” he said, “me no ghost.”
“I be the ghost, Charlie,” Johnny told him. “Gallup paid Tony to git me. I’m goin’ to play dead now. You go down and git the horses. I be ready pretty quick.”
This talk of ghosts was “bad medicine” in Charlie’s eyes, but he agreed, nevertheless, to do as the boy ordered.