“Now, Pat, stand there and empty a couple of revolvers into the coach,” he said, “and then you get Frank’s horse, take that dead man’s luggage, and go to the retreat, but say nothing of where I am, or when to expect me back; only do you keep in Spy’s Cañon, to be ready to meet me, or a messenger I may send there. Now I am ready, and do you get off at once, for a body of cavalry might happen along this way.” Mounting the box, where the dead Ribbons still lay, after a few more words of instructions to his man, the outlaw chief drove on up the hill, holding the reins like one who was a skilled driver. His outlaw companion followed a moment after, with the luggage of the dead passenger, leaving his dead comrade and the horses lying in the trail. Half an hour after the coach had rolled away, a horseman came dashing upon the scene and drew rein. The horseman was Buffalo Bill, the king of scouts, and he cried sternly: “This is Silk Lasso Sam’s work!” CHAPTER IV. BONNIE BELLE OF POCKET CITY. Of all strange camps and communities ever seen upon the frontier that of Pocket City, in Yellow Dust Valley, was the strangest. It was named from the fact that it fitted into the valley among the mountains like a pocket in a dress, and also on account, perhaps, of there having been found just there a number of rich pockets of gold. Yellow Dust Valley was a home of miners, a couple or more thousands being scattered along the sides of the mountains, and Pocket City, situated near the upper end, was the headquarters of all. There the stage-line had its ending, and there was a semi-monthly coach from Pocket City to the main stem of the Overland Trail. There was a post-office, a hotel known as the Frying Pan, a saloon and gambling-resort called the Devil’s Den, several stores, a combination blacksmith and wagon-shop, with smaller drinking and betting-places, and several boarding-houses. The camps were the resort of a very wild element of humanity, varying from honest men to horse-thieves, road-agents, gold-grabbers, and desperadoes of the very worst type. The most prominent person in Pocket City was a woman, or, rather, a young girl, because she could scarcely be over nineteen. She had arrived in Pocket City one day in a coach which had been held up, and had defended herself so well that she had shot one of the robbers dead, and enabled the driver to get away. The “big man” of Pocket was in that coach, returning from the East. He had received a mortal wound, and was so tenderly cared for by the young girl that, upon arriving at his home, he had told her frankly that he would make her his heiress, as he had no one to claim his riches. And so it was that Bonnie Belle, as he had called her, after a daughter who had died years before, became the postmistress, stage-agent, landlady of the Frying Pan Hotel and of the Devil’s Den.