Surgeon Powell was sent for and was able to come to her rooms to meet his comrades, and a pleasant meeting it was.
“And now, Bonnie Belle, I desire to ask you one question,” said Buffalo Bill.
“Certainly.”
“Where is your brother?”
“Far from here, for he was set free upon conditions. I have kept my contract with him, and with a handsome sum of money, he has gone, to appear amid these scenes no more. As for myself, I shall start East upon the next coach going out, to escape punishment from Colonel Dunwoody, and also to visit the family of Deadshot Dean, near my old girlhood home.”
Until a late hour they all talked together and the next morning, as Surgeon Powell expressed himself as well able to journey, the return march was begun.
Arriving there they found that Colonel Dunwoody had received the letter written him by Ruth, and to Surgeon Powell he said confidentially:
“One of these days I will ask that woman to be my wife, Powell, for she is as noble a specimen of womanhood as I ever knew. The letter she wrote me was a confession of why she had so cleverly deceived us all here, in her rescue of her brother, and begged that I would understand that her motive was to save him that he might not die unrepentant.
“She has been on this border, as the landlady of a hotel and a gambling-den, and yet I believe that she is pure as an angel.”
“And I would stake life, honor, all I hold dear on earth, Colonel Dunwoody, upon her, for she is all that you say that she is,” was Frank Powell’s response, and then he told the colonel all that had occurred at the time of his being taken to the hotel.