“Yours affectionately,
“Fannie.”
“Well, that letter is plain sailing,” remarked Overton, “but there is only one name in it we could follow up—the partner, John Ingalls. But I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”
“Wait! there is another letter—two more,” said Lyster; and the others were silent as he read:
“Joe: I hope you’ll hate me now. I can stand that better than to know you still like me. I can’t help it. I am going with him—your partner. He loves me, too, Joe—not in the brotherly way you did, but in a way that makes me think of him and no one else. So I can’t marry any one but him. Maybe it’s a sin to be false to you, Joe; but I never could go to you now. And I can’t help going where he wants me to go. Don’t be mad at him; he can’t help it either, I suppose. He says he will always be good to me, and I am going. But my heart is heavy 135 as I write to you. I am not happy—maybe because I love him too much. But I am going. Try and forget me.
“Fannie.”
In dead silence Lyster unfolded the third paper. The drama of this stranger’s life was a pathetic thing to the listeners, who looked at him with pity in their eyes, but could utter no words of sympathy to the man who sat there helpless and looked at them. Then the last, a penciled sheet, was read.
“Joe: I am dying, I think. The Indian woman with me says so; and I hope it is true. He came to me to-day—the first time in weeks. He never married me, as he promised. He cursed me to-day because my baby face led him away from a fortune he knows you found. I never told him, though it is a wonder. All he knows of it he heard you say in your sleep when you were sick that time. To-day he told me you were paralyzed, Joe—that you are helpless still—that he has taken Indians with him there to your old claim, and searched every foot of ground for the gold vein he thinks you know of. But it is of no use, and he is furious over it, and so taunts me of your helplessness alone in the wilderness.
“Joe, I still have the plan you made of the river and the two little streams and the marked tree. Can’t I make amends some way for the wrong I did you? Is there anywhere a friend you could trust to work the find and take care of you? For if you are too helpless to write yourself, and can get only the name of the person to me, I will send the plan some way to him. I know I am not to live long. I am in a perfect fever to hear from you, and tell you that my sin against you weighs me down to despair.
“I can’t tell you of my life with him; it is too horrible. I do not even know who he is, for Ingalls is not his name. We are with Indians and they call him ’Medicine,’ and seem to know him well. He has left me here, to-day, and I feel I will never see him again. He tells me he 136 has sent for a young white boy who is to be brought to camp, and who will help care for me. Anything would be better than the sly red faces about me; they fill me with terror. My one hope is that the boy may get this letter sent to you, and that some word may come to me from you before my life ends. It has taken me all this day to write to you.