But he had all the fight taken out of him, and he allowed himself to be bound again securely, after which Nick led him to Madge's cabin, and tied him to one of the rustic chairs on the porch.
Including Black Madge and her first lieutenant, Handsome, there were one hundred and two prisoners turned over to be dealt with by the law when Patsy returned to the place in the hills, having piloted the officers who were sent by special train to complete the capture.
Black Madge did not see the detective again to speak to him; but she sent him a note, in which she said:
"I haven't done with you yet, Nick Carter. I will never forgive you for fooling me as you did. I shall manage to get my liberty again, somehow, some time, and when I do, it will be for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on you. And I will get even some day, never fear."
Nick Carter had entirely forgotten Black Madge's threat when he was forcibly reminded of it one morning by the following letter which he found on his breakfast table:
"NICK CARTER: One month ago--how time flies--I wrote to you that I hadn't done with you yet; that I would never forgive you, and that I would get even some day.
"That was a month ago. I thought when I wrote that it might take a year--but they are easy marks in this State.
"It was my hope after you captured me and all my followers, that I would have a chance to see you again, and to talk to you before I was taken away to prison. You would say probably that I wanted to boast; for a threat, after all, is only another kind of boasting. But it wasn't so, Nick Carter; I wanted to tell you what you had succeeded in doing; and this is it:
"You have succeeded in creating in me a passion which supersedes all others in my nature--the passion of hatred. Twice now you have foiled me; twice you have been successful in arresting me, and the latter of these two times you not only destroyed the organization which I had created, and rendered it utterly impotent for my future uses, but you destroyed almost at one blow every ambition that I had through that organization and by reason of it.
"You didn't know that, and you couldn't appreciate it; and it wouldn't matter at all to you if you had; neither has it anything to do with the purport of this letter.