Soon after Blufe Brandon, weak with loss of blood and fasting, emerged from the cave and moved slowly away toward the Indian encampment, cursing the mysterious author of his sore bones and bruised head.
An hour after his interview with the resurrected chief, Solomon Strange was seated under the shelter of a great pine in conversation with another man, one whom he had requested to meet him there—at the Devil’s Tarn.
That man was the white-haired prisoner of the robbers’ ranch, Gustave Barker.
For hours they sat and conversed as though no storm was raging around them.
Finally the storm died away, and as the moon struggled out through the rifts in the skurrying clouds, Solomon Strange and his companion left their seat beneath the great pine by the Devil’s Tarn, and took their way eastward through the forest.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A DEMON NO MORE.
Morning dawned bright and clear after the night of the storm.
Our friends in the ranger’s cavern breakfasted early, for they were anxious to be off for the land of civilization.
Captain Warren Walraven concluded to give up his wild, secluded life, and with his angel wife go back to his old home in Iowa.