CHAPTER X.
A MYSTERY.
The excited and ruffianly crowd dashed to and fro, overturning the furniture, tearing aside curtains, and looking for plunder, but unable to find anything of value, beyond the furniture, or to see a single living person under the roof.

Not a dollar in money, not a piece of plate rewarded their search.
"Fire the crib! fire the crib!" came from fifty throats, and almost as soon as spoken, the act was consummated.
Wild Bill, angered to find no one on whom to vent his wrath, or shake his thirst for revenge, looked on the blaze as it rose with gloomy satisfaction, muttering that he only wished the witch of a woman was burning in it.
The crowd increased as the flames rose higher and tighter, but no one tried to check them, and soon it was but a smoldering mass of ruins where the pretty cottage had stood.
But the late occupant, unharmed, was a mile away, and having just paid off and discharged her faithful servants, was on the point of mounting to ride off with the Texan and Mr.Pond, when the last shout of the dispersing crowd reached her ears.
She smiled when she heard it, and said: "I can afford all the harm they have done, I led but a lonesome life there.

I feel that the change I am about to make will be for the better." The three, with two loaded horses besides those they rode, now moved quietly but swiftly out of the suburbs of the town, where the horses had been stabled, and with the Texan leading the way, steered to the westward, having no compass but the stars.
For an hour the three rode on, and then, pointing to some timber ahead, the Texan said: "Addie, there is where you will find him whom you seek.

Tell him I have not altered any of my plans, and that I shall lay in camp to-morrow at Lone-tree Spring, an hour's gallop south of the Twenty-mile Creek.

The next morning I will follow the trail we spoke of.