"The miners have subscribed the ransom money, and she is to be released. I will let you know particulars more fully as soon as I get the opportunity, endeavoring to have a letter here for you when I come to make the exchange, paying the ransom and receiving the lady from the outlaws.
"Doctor Dick will come with me; but the outlaws threaten to kill Miss Seldon if others come, or if any one else leaves Last Chance to pursue them, and that chief will keep his word.
Harding."
Then there followed a postscript, which read:
"The young messenger, Bernard Brandon, has most mysteriously disappeared, and no search can find him.
"H."
Buffalo Bill read this letter over twice, and said in a musing way:
"Those outlaws are becoming bold, indeed, when they deliberately rob a young girl and make her their prisoner. The man Brandon was her messenger, sent in search of her father, and his mysterious disappearance, to me, means that he has been captured by the road-agents.
"Now, I dare not halt the coach on the way to receive the girl, if the road-agents give her up; but I will be on the watch, see it go by, and be as near this spot when the ransom is paid as I dare be, for from here I may be able to track those devils to their lair."
So saying, the scout set out upon his return for his basin camp.