She was stripped to the waist, and upon her snow-white back were numerous welts from which trickled diminutive rivulets of crimson.  Her head was dropped against the stake to which she was bound, and she was evidently insensible.

With a cry of astonishment and indignation Fearless Frank leaped forward to sever her bonds, when like so many grim phantoms there filed out of the chaparral, and circled around him, a score of hideously painted savages.  One glance at the portly leader satisfied Frank as to his identity.  It was the fiend incarnate—­Sitting Bull!

CHAPTER II.

Deadwood Dick, the road-agent.

“=$500 Reward:= For the apprehension and arrest of a notorious young desperado who hails to the name of Deadwood Dick.  His present whereabouts are somewhat contiguous to the Black Hills.  For further information, and so forth, apply immediately to

     Hugh Vansevere,

     “At Metropolitan Saloon, Deadwood City.”

Thus read a notice posted up against a big pine tree, three miles above Custer City, on the banks of French creek.  It was a large placard tacked up in plain view of all passers-by who took the route north through Custer gulch in order to reach the infant city of the Northwest—­Deadwood.

Deadwood! the scene of the most astonishing bustle and activity, this year (1877.) The place where men are literally made rich and poor in one day and night.  Prior to 1877 the Black Hills have been for a greater part undeveloped, but now, what a change!  In Deadwood districts every foot of available ground has been “claimed” and staked out; the population has increased from fifteen to more than twenty-five hundred souls.

The streets are swarming with constantly arriving new-comers; the stores and saloons are literally crammed at all hours; dance-houses and can-can dens exist; hundreds of eager, expectant, and hopeful miners are working in the mines, and the harvest reaped by them is not at all discouraging.  All along the gulch are strung a profusion of cabins, tents and shanties, making Deadwood in reality a town of a dozen miles in length, though some enterprising individual has paired off a couple more infant cities above Deadwood proper, named respectively Elizabeth City and Ten Strike.  The quartz formation in these neighborhoods is something extraordinary, and from late reports, under vigorous and earnest development are yielding beyond the most sanguine expectation.

The placer mines west of Camp Crook are being opened to very satisfactory results, and, in fact, from Custer City in the south, to Deadwood in the north, all is the scene of abundant enthusiasm and excitement.

A horseman riding north through Custer gulch, noticed the placard so prominently posted for public inspection, and with a low whistle, expressive of astonishment, wheeled his horse out of the stage road, and rode over to the foot of the tree in question, and ran his eyes over the few irregularly-written lines traced upon the notice.