“No, it is just to you, for I feel that you are here, living the life you do, only to save your brother, to redeem him. You have played a bold game for his rescue, and as you believe in his reformation, as he has pledged himself to lead a different life, I shall not be the one to thwart you, so give you a warning that if Buffalo Bill comes here with his scouts, as he surely will, he will ferret out the hiding-place of your brother, and you will see him hanged before your eyes, I very much fear.”
“Then you would advise me to at once remove him to a safe retreat?” anxiously asked Bonnie Bell.
“I would advise you to send him far from here at once, Bonnie Belle. If he goes back to his old ways of wickedness again, then you have done far more than your duty by him, and he must take the consequences.”
“Yes, it must be so,” she said sadly, and then, as she turned from the room, she continued:
“I thank you, Surgeon Powell; and I will at once take your advice.”
“I may have done wrong, but it was in justice to that noble girl,” muttered the Surgeon Scout, when left alone.
From the room of the Surgeon Scout Bonnie Belle went with very thoughtful face to her room.
She soon made her arrangements for bringing the outlaw to her own quarters, for she could do nothing else.
Then she looked the situation squarely in the face and decided to speak and act at once. Delays are dangerous, and, with Buffalo Bill upon the trail of her brother, she understood just what it meant.
So she said, after some time spent in silent thought: