The outlaw made no reply and obeyed, and Ruth rode on with Surgeon Powell by her side. Soon after he found himself in pleasant quarters, and his wounds were skilfully dressed by the fair hands of the good Samaritan who once more appeared in her character of Bonnie Belle. When Ruth had seen Surgeon Powell in comfortable quarters at the Frying Pan, she mounted her horse and rode alone out of Pocket City. There were few miners abroad at that hour, and if any one saw her at all they supposed in the darkness that she was a man. Even had they known it to be Bonnie Belle she would have gone unquestioned as to the cause of her late ride, no matter how much any one would have wondered as to the reason. She rode directly toward Hangman’s Gulch, and that was a sure sign that she would meet no one on that trail, which the bravest of the miners would not travel by night. And yet there in that weird spot, among the graves of a score of victims of border justice or injustice, as the case might be, with the gallows rising above him, stood a man then under sentence of death to die by hanging; a man who could count his victims by the score, a man revengeful, merciless, and wicked far beyond his kind. It was Arden Leigh, known on the frontier as Silk Lasso Sam, and if the spot had haunting memories for him he did not reveal the fact by word or deed. He uttered an impatient oath now and then, as time passed and he did not hear his sister returning, and at last, losing his patience as time stole on, he was moving down toward the mouth of the gulch, when his ears caught the clatter of hoof-falls. “She is coming,” he muttered. Then, as he darted back into the shadow, he drew a revolver and said: “But I must not be too sure.” Soon a horse and rider appeared in the gulch, and, drawing rein, the soft, plaintive notes of the whippoorwill was heard. “How that call carries me back to the past, for it was my call for Ruth,” and the man seemed to feel for an instant a pang of memory and remorse that overwhelmed him. Then as the call was repeated again and again he stepped out from the shadow and approached the girl where she sat upon her horse. “Ah! brother, I am so glad to find you, for I was becoming anxious,” she said, as she slipped from her saddle to the ground. “I was so taken aback at the old whippoorwill call, Ruth, that I could neither answer it nor speak. I was overwhelmed for a moment.” “It was your call for me, when I was a little girl, Arden.” “Yes, and that is what impressed me so.” “Then you can feel, and you are not, as people have said, utterly heartless and callous?” “I hope I am a changed man, my sister. But what am I to do?” “You are to return with me to Pocket City, for I have a place in my wing of the hotel where I can hide and care for you for a few days, as it would by no means be safe for you to attempt now to go through the country alone.” “And why not now?”