her to deny his suit.

His retaliation was prompt and Indian-like. He killed the father and
mother at the first opportunity, seized the girl when she was at a
distance from the village, and carried her to the deserted quicksilver
mine near Spanish Camp. In a tunnel that branched from American Shaft he
had fashioned a rude cell of stone and wood, and into that he forced and
fastened her. He had stocked it with water and provisions, and for some
weeks he held the wretched girl a captive in total darkness, visiting her
whenever he felt moved to do so until, his passion sated, he resolved to
leave the country.

As an act of partial atonement for the wrong he had done, he hung a
leather coat at the mouth of the tunnel, on which, in picture writing, he
indicated the whereabouts of the girl. Search parties had been out from
the time of her disappearance, and one of them chanced on this clue and
rescued her as she was on the point of death. The savage who had exacted
so brutal and excessive a revenge fled afar, and his whereabouts were
never known.