“Do you know she takes the coming execution of her brother, loving him as she does, very coolly. “Yes, Bill, and it sets me to thinking.” “And me.” “You have an idea?” “Yes.” “What is it?” “That she may accomplish by strategy after all the rescue of Silk Lasso Sam.” “It may be, for she is a very clever woman, and one dangerous to balk when she sets her mind upon carrying out a plot.” CHAPTER XVI. A BORDER BURIAL. The morning dawned upon Yellow Dust Valley with Pistols, and Dave Dunn, and their other ally, Maddox, making tracks out of the valley with an anxiety to place many miles between themselves and the citizens of Pocket City in as short a space of time as was possible. Crowds are proverbially fickle, and the thought in the minds of the three fugitives was that the mob might decide to change its mind and hang them, when it came to attend the funeral of Shuffles, whom Pistols had so wantonly shot. While these three were keeping up a quick step for safety, as if by common consent, Pocket City was taking a holiday. The miners had held open house at Devil’s Den until very late, or, rather, early, for the gray of dawn was visible in the east when the doors of the saloon were at last closed. Business had been good for the saloon, and bad for many a gambler, and the employees were anxious to get the accounts straightened out before Bonnie Belle examined the sales, expenses, and profits. Shuffles had been a universal favorite, for he was always polite, obliging, and generous. He could never refuse a poor devil a drink and would chalk the amount against himself, so that at the end of the month he would only have a small sum coming to him out of his wages. Bonnie Belle had held the money back until just before her departure for the East, when she had placed him in charge of the saloon, and at the same time said to him: “Shuffles, you have been here for several years, and Landlord Lazarus gave you the name of being a very honest man. In the past ten months you have charged to yourself nearly two-thirds of your wages for favors shown others who have never paid you. “I have kept it back, as I knew that it would be loaned away or spent. I now hold for you the sum of what those amounts are, and its total is a trifle over eight hundred dollars. When it reaches a thousand I shall send it to your mother, of whom you have so often spoken to me, to keep for you, and who you say has a mortgage on her little farm which she and your two younger brothers are working hard to pay off. How much is that mortgage?” Shuffles could hardly speak, his heart was so full of joy and gratitude. But at last he faltered: “It is eleven hundred dollars, miss, for I sent mother fifty dollars last week; but, oh! what can I do to thank you for your goodness to me?” “Act as squarely by me as you have done in the past, and manage the Den for me until further instructions.” “I will, miss, I will.”