Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Bold Play; Or, The Tiger of the Hills онлайн

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“But I’ve told you!”

“But shown no papers, nor even a badge. You must have some source of authority, I suppose?”

For an instant the man who had given the name of Jackson Dane seemed to hesitate.

“The truth is,” he said, “though likely you won’t believe it, that I lost everything in that hotel fire at Deming, where I was last week; just got out by the skin of my teeth; so that my extra clothing and everything else went up in smoke.”

“Er, waugh!” Nomad gulped.

“You think that is fishy?”

“I didn’t say et!” the trapper apologized. “Et’s jes’ a way I has o’ breathin’ hard, at times.”

“You haven’t any letters which you have received since?” Buffalo Bill questioned.

“Well, yes: just one!”

Jackson Dane pulled out what seemed at first a letter, but was discovered to be an envelope from which the letter was gone; it bore the postmark of Blossom Range, and the date of that very day.

“I got this letter here this morning, soon after I struck the town,” he explained.

The scout looked at the envelope, noting that it bore the address of “Mr. Jackson Dane, Blossom Range,” but that it held no letter.