“Now, Burke, you need just such a gal fer your wife, and now’s your time to get her. Yes, I’ll carry the gal with me, and after I have given King up to the military, I’ll divide the blood money with those fellows, and then give them the slip and take the buried treasure myself; guess I won’t divide that nor the gal, either.
“No, Tom Burke, your fortune’s made now, with money and a wife, and I guess you better light out for Texas and start a ranch, for this country won’t be very healthy for you, I’m a-thinking.”
So saying, Bad Burke, the traitor outlaw, descended to the bottom of the gorge, and, as the reader has seen, confronted Pearl. How his treacherous plans toward the maiden and his chief were frustrated, the reader has also seen, and that his crimes were rewarded by a death he had seemed little to anticipate.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE SPECTER OF THE VALLEY.
Buffalo Bill was not the only man who had been in concealment near the spot where Bad Burke met his death. Scarcely was he gone from the place, when Red Hand rose into view. He stared after the retreating form of the scout, and muttered:
“I shall go through that valley, too. If there is anything to be seen there I want to see it.”
But he shuddered as he spoke, and his face seemed drawn with pain. So it came about that Red Hand followed Buffalo Bill. But the scout had moved so rapidly that not once did Red Hand come in sight of him. And in a little while, so painful were the thoughts of the latter, that Red Hand almost forgot that the scout was somewhere ahead of him.
Thus Red Hand set forth upon his trip, wending his way in the direction of the Ramsey settlement, going toward the point which Pearl had urged Buffalo Bill to avoid on account of the weird stories among the Indians that a spirit haunted the valley.