Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Best Bet; Or, A Sure Thing Well Won онлайн

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“Do not hide her from my sight; I will fill the grave myself; leave me, my kind friends, leave me, and ere long I will follow you,” said the parson.

One by one the people departed, the train pulled out of camp, the last wagon disappeared over a rise in the prairie, and the voices of the cattle drivers grew fainter and fainter in the distance. Still the old man stood, his hands resting on the spade, which had been left with him.

His dead daughter lay in the shallow grave, enveloped in the blanket shroud, and her face veiled as she had worn it in life. A short distance away stood his horse, and no sound broke the silence after the shouts of the cattle drivers had died away.

At length he went to work and shoveled the earth into the grave with a strength and quickness one would not have looked for in a man of his age.

Casting the spade aside, he mounted his horse and rode down the stream instead of following the trail of the train. His thoughts seemed far away, his head was bent, and he seemed unmindful in his grief which way his horse was taking him, or that he had been warned of Indians lurking in the vicinity.