“You need not,” said a sweet clear voice from across the room. “I know. I heard. I think I knew all the time—but you were all so good to make me hope. Don’t worry about me any more, dear friends. I am all right now. It is much better to know. I hope they didn’t hang him. You think they shot him, don’t you?” “Little girl, little girl,” cried Langford, on his knees beside her, “it is not that! It is only that we have not found him. But no news is good news. That we have found no trace proves that they have to guard him well because he is alive. We are going on a new tack to-morrow. Believe me, little girl, and go to bed now, won’t you, and rest?” “Yes,” she said, wearily, as one in whom no hope was left, “I will go. I will mind—the Boss.” As he laid her gently on the bed, while Mrs. White, aroused from sleep, fluttered aimlessly and drowsily about, he whispered, his breath caressing her cheek: “You will go to sleep right away, won’t you?” “I will try. You are the Boss.” CHAPTER XII WAITING The man found dead the night the Lazy S was burned out was not easily identified. He was a half-breed, but half-breeds were many west of the river, and the places where they laid their heads at night were as shifting as the sands of that rapid, ominous, changing stream of theirs, which ever cut them off from the world of their fathers and kept them bound, but restless, chafing, in that same land where their mothers had stared stolidly at a strange little boat-load tugging up the river that was the forerunner of the ultimate destiny of this broad northwest country, but which brought incidentally—as do all big destinies in the great scheme bring sorrow to some one—wrong, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, to a once proud, free people now in subjection. At last the authorities found trace of him far away at Standing Rock, through the agent there, who knew him as of an ugly reputation,—a dissipated, roving profligate, who had long since squandered his government patrimony. He had been mixed up in sundry bad affairs in the past, and had been an inveterate gambler. So much only were the Kemah County authorities able to uncover of the wayward earthly career of the dead man. Of his haunts and cronies of the period immediately preceding his death, the agent could tell nothing. He had not been seen at the agency for nearly a year. The reprobate band had covered its tracks well. There was nothing to do but lay the dead body away and shovel oblivion over its secret. * * * * *