“Thunder and guns!” fell from his lips, as he gazed first at Tom and then at the unconscious waif. “Is it possible that I’ve been tracking the wrong person the best years of my life? Tom, you stare but don’t speak. Can’t you say a word, and confirm—no! dispel my terrible suspicions?”
Tom Terror shook his head.
“So,” he said, looking up into Rosebud Dan’s startled countenance, “so the baby was a girl?”
Then, as if determined to have the rest and attention that his wound demanded, despite the new and exciting phase the adventure was assuming, he staggered toward the cot.
“I reckon she’ll hardly get to be the gold-bug’s wife now,” he muttered, as he fell upon the skin and fixed his eyes on the Wolf. “He’d give an arm ef that mole warn’t on her face. We used to think that it war on somebody else’s.”
The next moment he turned away, and shutting his teeth hard, tried to kill the groan of agony that came up from his shattered breast.
CHAPTER VI.
Again we must convey the reader to the wild metropolis of the Black Hills.
In the bar-room which we have once visited the Vigilantes of Custer were again congregated.