If a rivalry existed between the two, it was Nina, not Clarice, that revealed it, for the latter appeared to know no rival and to live for others rather more than herself.
She admired Nina de Sutro greatly, yet felt pained at times to hear her cut deeply when the opportunity offered, and often wound the one she gave the stinging rejoinder to, while, with a look or smile she would call him again to her side.
“She is a sad coquette, or heartless one, perhaps, and cannot help it. At times I fear she has had some great sorrow to embitter her life, and, if so, I pity her and could never reproach.”
So said Clarice Carr of Nina de Sutro to her confidante and devoted friend, Louise Lester.
“So I have thought, Clarice, and Lionel also suggested it, for she is all softness at times, and again almost cruel toward her admirers,” was Mrs. Lester’s comment.
When Silk Lasso Sam, in his disguise as the wounded passenger hero, Austin Marvin, had come to the fort, he had devoted himself at first to Nina de Sutro, and she claimed to have met him in Mexico, where he had saved her life.
But the secret of that meeting, the secret that was between them, she did not reveal, and he dared not do so.
But soon after he turned his attention to Clarice Carr, and it ended as the miner related to Bonnie Belle, in the leading of the maiden into a treacherous trap from which she would not have escaped without large ransom, but for Deadshot Dean’s tracking the outlaws to their lair, with Buffalo Bill.
When the maiden was rescued, and the outlaws brought prisoners into camp, the excitement was intense, and disciplined soldiers though they were, there were mutterings of such intense hatred heard against Silk Lasso Sam that a double guard was placed about him.
That they had all been most cleverly taken in, every officer had to admit, though they could not but admire the magnificent nerve and daring of the outlaw chief, who they realized was no ordinary man, and hoped that an end would soon come to his many red deeds when he died on the gallows.