“This is the place for you, Dora,” said Midnight Jack, addressing the fair girl whom he had carried to this bewitching spot. “I'll visit your grave every day, and death shall be the portion of the fiend who ventures to despoil it. Now for the secret home. I saw it the other day, though it was well hidden. The boy has not come back yet, I think, for I saw him down near Brier Ford at sundown, and he had no horse either. However, he's an innocent-looking cuss, I take it; perfectly harmless!”
A few moments later, Midnight Jack leaped to the ground at the foot of a rugged hill covered with a dense undergrowth, and apparently inaccessible. But his keen eyes descried a path which seemed to lead to the top, and up this he sprung.
A few bounds brought him to a strong door, fixed seemingly in the hill, and adroitly concealed by a variety of wild grape-vines which hung from above.
Midnight Jack entered the hole in the ground and struck a lucifer, which for several moments illumined the place, showing him that it was the dwelling of a human being, for several rude articles of furniture lay around, as well as a lot of new skins, a pickaxe and a spade.
As Midnight Jack, with spade and pick on his shoulder, emerged from the place, he uttered a cry which was an oath.
“Thunder and rifles!” he ejaculated, and as the digging implements glided from his hands, he drew his repeating rifle. “The red devils are going to give me more exercise. Well, they shall find that I am eager to keep up the work I began to-night.”
Another shaft cut short the sentence, and the road-agent saw that it sped upward from the depths of the little valley, and just beyond his horse which, with head erect, had snuffed the prowling foe.
“Not dead yet, you dogs!” he cried, recovering just as his horse sunk to the earth bullet-stricken.
“Lie still, Quito! It's life and death with us now,” he said to the horse as he dropped beside him. “I'm hit and so are you, but the bullet that is to kill Midnight Jack isn't carried by the red-livered dogs over there.”
“They shall not get you, Dora. By the gold of Ophir—”