The road agent found five dead braves on the spot where the Sioux band had fought, but no sign of his sister's pallid face greeted his keen vision.
“You may carry Dora to the North Pole, but even there the hand of Midnight Jack will fall upon you and tear her away!” he cried, looking toward the direction in which the Indians had fled. “I will not rest until I have avenged my sister!”
“Thet's bizness, stranger,” came the unpolished voice from among the little trees that stood thickly on the sides of the hill. “I'm comin' down to take the hand of the feller what loaded a wagon with Injuns down the road. I'm a reg'lar sky-scraper! Hold on thar, stranger!”
A moment later two figures mounted on mules, whose bodies bore the marks of heavy harness, came in sight, and the road-agent soon caught their eye.
“Hyar we ar'!” cried a lank and uncouth, but strong specimen of humanity, springing from the animal's back, and alighting so near Midnight Jack that that worthy had to start back to avoid a collision. “I hevn't got a card, but my name is Rube Rattler, or the Screamin' Eagle of the Smoky Roost. Whoop-ee! strangers, we've checked five of 'em straight through to-night. This boy is—bless my boots! if I don't forgit what he calls himself. I picked 'im up back thar a piece. Old Tanglefoot war goin' to let moonlight into 'im, when I said, 'I guess not,' an' he didn't. He's a chicken, sir, an' I'm his friend from this night. The man what teches him teches the Thunderbolt of the Dark-edged Cloud. Say, did the Injuns take anything?”
“Take anything?” and Midnight Jack echoed the uncouth individual's words in tones so vengeful that Gopher Gid, who still sat astride one of old Tanglefoot's mules, started. “They took what Midnight Jack never took from any man—a sister.”
“I've heerd of you,” Rattler said. “You never took a thing from me, Midnight Jack, and I'm always ready to help the man what's lost any of his own. Put it thar! an' let us be friends.”
The stony expression on Midnight Jack's face relaxed, and the boy opened his eyes in wonder when he saw the two men shaking hands.
“We had a queer tussle to-night,” the Sky-scraper said, glancing at Gopher Gid. “That old rot-gut peddler lost a linchpin. He tried to cuss it back, but it war the most wasted cussin' you ever heerd of. Then, as I said, he got at the boy thar who came up to help 'im; but jist about that time the Thunderbolt of the Dark-edged Cloud dropped close by 'im. We emptied his cargo—knocked in the heads of his kegs—and left 'im with two of his mules. He war usin' the strongest kind o' language. It was amusin' to hear 'im. Did you ever meet Tanglefoot?”