“Why, Blufe, what ails you? your voice sounds like the grave. Several days? why you were well enough the night you became one of the brotherhood.”
“Dungarvon, you’re a fool.”
“Why so? what do you mean, Blufe?”
“Just what I say. The other night that we met here, a man was concealed where he heard every word we said, and when we parted, he followed me, beat me down, stripped off my bear-skin and put it on himself, threw me into a gorge, where I lay, more dead than alive, several days. The night of the storm I recovered sufficient to get out of the gorge just as a flood of water came sweeping down. I moved off toward my village, and on the way I met the man who had beat me down, robbed me of my disguise, and threw me into the gorge. He seized me, dragged me into a cavern, and told me that he had been passing himself off as Black Bear, with success, and—”
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Dungarvon; “well, your Indians must be a set of cursed fools, blind at that, to let a stranger fool them in that manner.”
“Well, he did,” continued Brandon, “and he went up to your ranch and was initiated into your band as Black Bear, and now who’s the blind fools? ha! ha! ha! Duval Dungarvon and his men!”
“Brandon, you’re lying as fast as you can talk.”
“Not a bit of it, my gallant Duval; but hear me through. The man said you met him at Lone Pine, told him all about your ceremony, as he heard you promise to tell me; then he said you told him all about your killing the miner on the Yuba, swearing the deed onto Wayland Sanford; your throwing Barker into the shaft; the escape of Sanford; the affair about the girl, Florence; the death of one Captain Walraven; and the capture of Barker, the hero of the Yuba shaft, and two Omaha ‘larks,’ all of which were then in your prison at your ranch. Then he said you got drunk, and that he stole a bottle of your brandy and gave it to Barker and the Omaha ‘larks,’ let them out of prison, locked the cell, and hid the key.”
“Blufe! Is what you are telling true?”
“True as gospel, captain.”