CHAPTER V.
Six long months had passed since the day when Dora had been stolen from her home. The father had the murdered man buried at his own expense. No one thought of accusing him; besides, little Loney had seen the assassination.
The unfortunate Helen Pierson came back “clothed and in her right mind,” as she had promised, and although it made a heavy drain upon the shoemaker’s savings—added to the expenses of the funeral—she was given money to take her back to the wide West, where she could begin life over again.
The body of her brother lay in his coffin in the tiny room above, but, with a delicacy rare to men, Morris Goldberg had wished to spare her the sight of a dead stranger. They neither knew that the man lying so calm and peaceful there was her brother who had come from the West to seek her and to avenge her; so she started Westward and the stranger was laid at rest.
Morris Goldberg had clung to Loney as the link between him and despair. The child had loved Dora and he loved her. So there was some one to whom the unhappy father could pour out his heart without fear of wearying them.
Search was made everywhere for the man who had shot the stranger, and for Dopey Mack, but they had disappeared from their old haunts. So, at last, the shoemaker decided to go West himself, in the faint hope that this man, who had doubtless come from some place in the West, had returned there. His rather slow mind had pieced together “Cactus Bill’s” declaration that he had come from Wyoming in search of the man who had abandoned his sister, and that Helen Pierson might be that sister. And, if she was, he owed it to her to look after the interest in the claim, the title to which he now held. Poor Loney could not be left behind, so Morris Goldberg sold out his little shop, which had prospered in his industrious hands, and all his belongings save a few cherished treasures which he left with his friend who owned a safe. But he took the tiny shoe with him.
What Bennie had felt at this sudden bereavement, just when he was so happy, words could not express. He, too, sought everywhere, and grew old and worn in his anxiety. So, not long after the shoemaker had gone, Bennie resigned his excellent position and took up his march toward the wild and woolly West.
At the end of six months from the day of the murder and the stealing of Dora, there was a little wave of excitement, which did not owe its origin to a shooting scrape, in a hamlet in Wyoming. This small cluster of shacks and shanties was known as Hellandgone, and a forsaken spot it seemed, with scarcely any vegetation beyond the dusty sagebrush and scrubby bushes sparsely scattered upon the hills beyond.
There was the usual “hotel,” a board house, of two stories. The lower floor was taken up by the bar-room, which was the general sitting-room, there being no other; the dining-room, with a lean-to kitchen beyond.
The dining-room had one long table made of planks, with a bench of the same length on each side. The bar-room had the smaller tables, and several wooden chairs, besides a few kegs which also served as seats on occasion. Lumber was scarce, and all furniture had to be carried a long distance in wagons, which made it not only an expensive luxury, but one of difficult attainment.