The emigrants continued on to California, now with diminished numbers; for, along with the leader, several others had been killed in the attack upon the caravan.
But, besides the dead, there was one living who went not with them.
Now that her father was no more, there was no one to hinder Clara Blackadder from staying behind, along with the man of her choice; no reason why she should not return with him to the seats of civilisation.
And she did so; not to share with him an humble home, but a residence far more splendid than the old plantation-house in the “Choctaw purchase.” As the Irish trapper had declared it, Edward O’Neil was one of the “Onales of Tipperary, a gintleman on both sides av the house;” and in due time the property belonging to both sides of the house became his.
It might be chivalry that he did not take his young Southern wife there, where she might feel lonely in a land of strangers. But it gave equal evidence of good sense, that he sold off his Tipperary estates, and invested the money in the purchase of town-lots upon an islet he had learned to love even more than the “gem of the seas.” It was the isle of Manhattan.
There he still lives, happy in the companionship of his beautiful and faithful wife; cheered by sweet children, and, at intervals, by the presence of his old comrade, ’Lije Orton, who, now that railroads have penetrated the far prairies, comes occasionally to pay him a visit, and keep him posted up in the lore of the “mountain men.”
The End.