What a miserable ending to a life like his--a division commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, a Lieutenant-Governor of his State.

What strange combination of circumstances could ever have brought such a man to this place, and sent him forth across those Indian-scouted plains?
Surely nothing ordinary.

And why should those border desperadoes have followed, through sixty miles of desolation, to trike him down?
It was not robbery, at least in the ordinary sense.

What then?
And how was "Black Bart" involved?
Why should he be sufficiently interested to swear out a warrant, and then assist in his arrest?
There must be something to all this not apparent upon the surface--some object, some purpose shrouded in mystery.

No mere quarrel, no ordinary feud, no accident of meeting, no theory of commonplace robbery, would account for the deed, or for the desperate efforts now being made to conceal it.
Some way, these questions, thus surging upon him, became a call to live, to fight, to unravel their mystery.