“Easy enough, since you had buried me in a _state of catalepsy_, brought on by excitement and fatigue, and not very deep in the ground, for when I regained consciousness I found I was in the ground, the dirt mostly off of me and a pack of wolves lowering around. The beasts had dug the dirt away.”
The young men came forward and congratulated the colonel on his resurrection and escape. Rainbolt took him by the hand and said:
“I am happy to meet you thus, Wayland Sanford; your part has been well played. Solomon Strange _was_ a strange man, and the mystery connected with him stands revealed.”
“Warren Walraven,” returned the colonel, “it eases my heart to hear you talk thus--I, who, so--”
“Never mind, colonel, never mind. I know what you would say. Let the past be forgotten,” said the ranger.
“So be it, thank God!” murmured the colonel.
At this moment Gustave Barker emerged from the woods and joined the happy group.
Wayland Sanford’s labor had been doubly rewarded.
When he had returned to consciousness and found that he had been buried for dead, that his young friends were gone, he recalled his situation, the last he knew before he fell unconscious from the shock the news Rainbolt had communicated to him had given him, he arose from his shallow grave, beat off the wolves that had, fortunately, dug him out; and then he resolved upon disguising himself and going forth to meet the ranger, and bring to justice the man who held him in his power.
He knew full well that Duval Dungarvon was the direct cause of Silvia’s abduction, and he determined to search him out and compel him to acknowledge his innocence in the Miner’s Gulch affair to the world.
Before leaving the grave, however, he filled it up, smoothed it over and then covered it with the brush which he supposed his friends left over it. His object in this was to surprise them just as we have seen, should they ever return there.
Procuring his disguise, he set forth. What he accomplished the reader has already seen.
After some delay, the party resumed its journey toward Cheyenne City, increased in number by the colonel and his old friend, Gustave Barker.
In the course of several days they arrived at the city.
There Ebony Jim and Flick O’Flynn bid them adieu and returned to the mountains, where they still remain; but as the Aërial Demon has never been heard of since Rodger Rainbolt left there, it is supposed that Ebony “couldn’t make it work.”