CHAPTER XXII.

THE RED RIGHT HAND.

A singular-looking man, dressed as a Western hunter, stood alone in a gorge in the depths of the Black Hills. On the hat that covered his handsome, well-shaped head was a large pin of red coral, shaped like a human hand.

The right hand of the hunter, which rested now on his rifle, was blood-red in color, thus resembling the coral hand pinned to the side of his hat. These two things gave him the name by which he was known--Red Hand, the scout.

As he stood thus, a deer leaped into view, and behind it came a man. The man’s rifle cracked, and the deer fell. Then the hunter’s rifle sounded, almost as if it were an echo, and the man who had shot the deer fell dead on the grass.

With rapid strides the man of the red right hand advanced and stood over the prostrate form of the man he had slain. Into his face crept a look that was hard to fathom, for it held hatred, sorrow, triumph, and remorse, all commingled.

Though limp and stiffening with death, the form of the man who had been shot was of splendid proportions, and clad in a full suit of buckskin. The head was sheltered by a soft felt hat, beneath which were clusters of dark curls clinging around the neck, while the face, pale and lifeless, was most striking in appearance, and had doubtless once been exceedingly handsome, before the stamp of reckless dissipation had been set upon it.

By the side of the slain lay a Spencer rifle, and in his belt were revolvers and knife, none of which had served him when face to face with the man who had taken his life.

At length the lips of Red Hand quivered slightly, parted, and he said, half aloud:

“At last we have met, Ben Talbot, you and I! Yes, met here, in the very heart of the wilderness--how different from our last meeting, seven years ago. Yes, met! you to fall dead at my feet, and your soul hurled into the bottomless pit by my hand. Dead, Ben Talbot, aye, dead you are, for my aim could not fail when the muzzle of my rifle covered your heart.

“A strange fate brought your footsteps to this spot! A strange destiny led me alone into these wilds where I believed a white man never came. Your fate led you to death; my destiny led me to avenge. But for the sake of the olden time I will not leave you here to be torn limb from limb by wild beasts. No; I will bury you beneath that tree, and a grave in the wilderness will be your tomb.”

A moment longer the scout stood, silently and painfully musing, and then the night shadows creeping on, warned him to begin his work. Unslinging, from a loop behind his belt, a small but serviceable hatchet, he began to dig a grave in the soft earth beneath a sheltering tree.

An hour’s work, and he had descended to a sufficient depth, and seeking the thicket, he cut a number of poles just the length of the grave. Then the stiffened form was tenderly raised and laid in its earthly bed, the feet toward the rising sun. Above it the poles were placed and securely fastened, for Red Hand knew that wild beasts would attempt to rob the grave of its human occupant.

Carefully and compactly the grave was filled, and then, in the smooth bark of the tree at its head, Red Hand cut with his knife the name of the man he had slain and the date of his death. It read: “Ben Talbot, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, January 1, 1838. Slain in the Black Hills, July 10, 1866.”

As Red Hand cut the last figure in the inscription, the darkness of night came upon the valley. Far above, on the eastward slope of the hills, was visible the rosy tinge of the departed sunshine, and upon the summit of the western mountains was the mellow light of the rising moon, tingeing with silvery radiance the forest-clad scenery, grand in its gloom, desolation and deathlike silence.