“I suspect what it is.  When the rustlers don’t like a man they have a frank way of telling him so, supplemented by a little good advice, I fancy I have been honoured in a similar way.”

He deliberately tore open the envelope, while Jennie and her brother looked curiously at him.  The moonlight, although strong, was not sufficiently so to show the words, which were written in lead-pencil.  Fred Whitney, therefore, struck a match and held it in front of the paper, while the recipient read in a low voice, loud enough, however, to be heard in the impressive hush: 

“Mont Sterry:  If you stay in the Powder River country twenty-four hours longer you are a dead man.  Over fifty of us rustlers have sworn to shoot you on sight, whether it is at Fort McKinley, Buffalo, or on the streets of Cheyenne.  I have persuaded the majority to hold off for the time named, but not one of them will do so an hour longer, nor will I ask them to do so.  We are bound to make an honest living, and it is weak for me to give you this warning, but I do it, repeating that if you are within reach twenty-four hours from the night on which this is handed to Whitney I will join them in hunting you down, wherever you may be.

    “Larch Cadmus.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Good-Bye.

Monteith Sterry read the “warning” through in a voice without the slightest tremor.  Then he quietly smoked his cigar and looked off in the moonlight, as though thinking of something of a different nature.

It was natural that Jennie Whitney should be more impressed by the occurrence, with the memory of the recent tragedy crushing her to the earth.  She exclaimed: 

“Larch Cadmus!  Why, Fred, he has visited our house several times; he was here last week.”

“Yes,” replied her brother; “he has often sat at our table; and, by the way, he is a great admirer of yours.”

“Nonsense!” was the response; “why do you say that?”

“It may be nonsense, but it is true, nevertheless.  Your mother noticed it; and, that there might be no mistake, Larch had the impudence to tell me so himself.”

“I never liked him; he is a bad man,” said Jennie, much to the relief of Sterry, who felt a little uncomfortable.  “I did not know he belonged to the rustlers.”

“He was a cowboy until last fall.  He had a quarrel with Col.  Ringgold and went off with the others, and has been on the blacklist ever since.”

“Why didn’t he bring the message himself,” continued the sister, “instead of sending it?”

“He did,” was the significant reply of the brother.

“What!  That surely was not he?”

“It was.  I knew his voice the moment he spoke; those whiskers were false; he didn’t want to be recognized, and I thought it as well to humor his fancy, but I could not be mistaken.”