Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Still Hunt; Or, The Robber of the Range онлайн

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The camps were the resort of a very wild element of humanity, varying from honest men to horse-thieves, road-agents, gold-grabbers, and desperadoes of the very worst type.

The most prominent person in Pocket City was a woman, or, rather, a young girl, because she could scarcely be over nineteen. She had arrived in Pocket City one day in a coach which had been held up, and had defended herself so well that she had shot one of the robbers dead, and enabled the driver to get away.

The “big man” of Pocket was in that coach, returning from the East. He had received a mortal wound, and was so tenderly cared for by the young girl that, upon arriving at his home, he had told her frankly that he would make her his heiress, as he had no one to claim his riches.

And so it was that Bonnie Belle, as he had called her, after a daughter who had died years before, became the postmistress, stage-agent, landlady of the Frying Pan Hotel and of the Devil’s Den.

What had brought the young girl to Pocket City no one knew; but Landlord Lazarus had not been in his grave a day before the rough element discovered that the mistress of the Frying Pan intended to be the master there.