CHAPTER IX.
“SOLOMON STRANGE, MY LORD.”
Two days Silvia had passed in the ranger’s home. Two days the ranger had spent in fruitless search of her father among the wilds of the Black Hills. But the kind-hearted man had every reason to believe that he would yet find him, and encouraged the maiden’s impatient spirits by the tenderest words of hope.
With his eagle he had left the cavern in the morning, and after a hard day’s ride returned at night.
The third day Rainbolt set out upon his mission, in which he had begun to feel a strange interest.
It was toward noon, that, while ascending a steep hill, he came suddenly face to face with a strange-looking individual who had come from the other side of the ridge.
The stranger stopped directly in front of the ranger as if he were going to dispute his passage. Rainbolt drew rein and scanned the fellow from head to foot.
He was tall, standing fully six feet in his moccasins, with an ungainly form, and eyes whose color could not be defined in the shadow of their scraggy, beetling brows. The complexion of his face was a dirty sallow, though it was almost hidden beneath its growth of grizzly gray whiskers that reached to the man’s waist.
Altogether he was a wretched specimen of humanity, and Rainbolt could not suppress a smile as he took in his doleful figure.
The strange creature carried a huge knotted club, with which he menaced the ranger.
“What is your name?” asked the fierce-looking man, abruptly.