With Kenton Kingsland dead, Captain Dash’s trail of hatred ended in the grave, and the loving sister, whom the Gambler Guide had falsely married, and who had died of a broken heart, was avenged.
But the young Texan, Dudley Dashwood, struck a trail that had a happier ending, for it led him to the altar, with sweet Mary Hale for his “pard.”
Buffalo Bill was his best man, while Ben Tabor, Seven-foot Harry, Old Negotiate, and hosts of others went East to attend the wedding of their loved leader.
Soon afterward Buffalo Bill departed for the Black Hills, in Dakota, where he was destined to pass through many strange adventures.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE RED RIGHT HAND.
A singular-looking man, dressed as a Western hunter, stood alone in a gorge in the depths of the Black Hills. On the hat that covered his handsome, well-shaped head was a large pin of red coral, shaped like a human hand.
The right hand of the hunter, which rested now on his rifle, was blood-red in color, thus resembling the coral hand pinned to the side of his hat. These two things gave him the name by which he was known—Red Hand, the scout.
As he stood thus, a deer leaped into view, and behind it came a man. The man’s rifle cracked, and the deer fell. Then the hunter’s rifle sounded, almost as if it were an echo, and the man who had shot the deer fell dead on the grass.