"Two years ago a young man left a ranch close to the Rio Grande border with a thousand head of cattle, which had been bought from him, to be paid for when delivered in Abilene, Kansas. He was noble, brave, handsome. He was good and true in all things. He was the only hope of a widowed mother, the very idol of a loving sister, whose life seemed linked with his. He promised when he left those he loved and who so loved him that he would hasten back with the proceeds of the sale, and then, with his mother and sister, he would return to the birthplace of the three, to the old Northern homestead, where his father's remains were buried, buy the old estate, and settle down to a quiet and a happy life. Long, anxiously, and prayerfully did that mother and sister wait for his return. Did he come? No; but the soul-blighting news came, which, like a thunderbolt, struck that mother--my mother--dead! Wild and despairing, I heard it--heard _this._ "The son, the brother, who never used a drop of strong drink in all his life; who never uttered an oath, or raised a hand in unkindness to man or woman, had been murdered--killed without provocation--no chance to defend his life, no warning to prepare for another world--shot down in mere wantonness. There lies the body of him who did it. Do you wonder that, over my dead mother's body, girl though I was, I swore to follow to the death him who killed my brother? It is not my fault that I have not kept my oath. I would have done it had I known that you, his friends, would have torn me limb from limb before his body was cold." "And served him right!" said an old miner, whose eyes were dimmed with moisture while the Texan girl told her story. "Where is McCall? His act was murder," cried Sam Chichester. "He has sloped, but I'll take his trail, and if there is law in Montana he shall hang," said California Joe, who bounded from the house, when it was discovered that the murderer had slipped away in the moment of excitement. How well California Joe kept his promise, history has already recorded. Followed over many a weary mile of hill and prairie, McCall was finally arrested, tried and convicted, as well by his own boast as the evidence of others, and he was hanged. But one glance at our heroine, for such the red-haired Texan is. With a look of haughty defiance, she asked: "Have I done aught that requires my detention here?" "No," said Captain Jack; "thank Heaven you have not. We'd make a poor fist at trying a woman by Lynch law, if you had done what you meant to." "Then I go, and few will be the white faces I ever see again!" she cried. The next moment she passed out, and as the crowd followed to see whither she went, she was seen to spring on a coal-black horse which stood unhitched before the door, and on it she rode at wild speed away toward the north-west, while a saddled but unridden mustang followed close behind her.