Buffalo Bill’s Pursuit

IN APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL).

It is now some generations since Josh Billings, Ned Buntline, and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, intimate friends of Colonel William F. Cody, used to forgather in the office of Francis S. Smith, then proprietor of the New York Weekly. It was a dingy little office on Rose Street, New York, but the breath of the great outdoors stirred there when these old-timers got together. As a result of these conversations, Colonel Ingraham and Ned Buntline began to write of the adventures of Buffalo Bill for Street & Smith.

Colonel Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa, February 26, 1846. Before he had reached his teens, his father, Isaac Cody, with his mother and two sisters, migrated to Kansas, which at that time was little more than a wilderness.

When the elder Cody was killed shortly afterward in the Kansas “Border War,” young Bill assumed the difficult rôle of family breadwinner. During 1860, and until the outbreak of the Civil War, Cody lived the arduous life of a pony-express rider. Cody volunteered his services as government scout and guide and served throughout the Civil War with Generals McNeil and A. J. Smith. He was a distinguished member of the Seventh Kansas Cavalry.

During the Civil War, while riding through the streets of St. Louis, Cody rescued a frightened schoolgirl from a band of annoyers. In true romantic style, Cody and Louisa Federci, the girl, were married March 6, 1866.

In 1867 Cody was employed to furnish a specified amount of buffalo meat to the construction men at work on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was in this period that he received the sobriquet “Buffalo Bill.”

In 1868 and for four years thereafter Colonel Cody served as scout and guide in campaigns against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. It was General Sheridan who conferred on Cody the honor of chief of scouts of the command.

After completing a period of service in the Nebraska legislature, Cody joined the Fifth Cavalry in 1876, and was again appointed chief of scouts.

Colonel Cody’s fame had reached the East long before, and a great many New Yorkers went out to see him and join in his buffalo hunts, including such men as August Belmont, James Gordon Bennett, Anson Stager, and J. G. Heckscher. In entertaining these visitors at Fort McPherson, Cody was accustomed to arrange wild-West exhibitions. In return his friends invited him to visit New York. It was upon seeing his first play in the metropolis that Cody conceived the idea of going into the show business.

Assisted by Ned Buntline, novelist, and Colonel Ingraham, he started his “Wild West” show, which later developed and expanded into “A Congress of the Rough Riders of the World,” first presented at Omaha, Nebraska. In time it became a familiar yearly entertainment in the great cities of this country and Europe. Many famous personages attended the performances, and became his warm friends, including Mr. Gladstone, the Marquis of Lorne, King Edward, Queen Victoria, and the Prince of Wales, now King of England.

At the outbreak of the Sioux, in 1890 and 1891, Colonel Cody served at the head of the Nebraska National Guard. In 1895 Cody took up the development of Wyoming Valley by introducing irrigation. Not long afterward he became judge advocate general of the Wyoming National Guard.

Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill) died in Denver, Colorado, on January 10, 1917. His legacy to a grateful world was a large share in the development of the West, and a multitude of achievements in horsemanship, marksmanship, and endurance that will live for ages. His life will continue to be a leading example of the manliness, courage, and devotion to duty that belonged to a picturesque phase of American life now passed, like the great patriot whose career it typified, into the Great Beyond.

CHAPTER I. THE VOICE FROM THE TREE.

Buffalo Bill drew rein and looked around. He was in a narrow and lonely trail that ran close by the Cinnabar River.

The country was gullied and cut by small cañons. Several hundred feet below him the river roared in its narrow, rock-bound bed. On the sloping side of this cañon was a number of trees, some of them of large size; and trees of the same kind bordered the trail.

The scout, having drawn rein, sat quite still in his saddle, listening. All he heard now was the roar of the stream, the soughing of the wind in the trees, and the restless champing of his spirited horse.

“Help!”

A sudden cry of distress sounded near him, and once more Buffalo Bill stared around.

The call seemed to have come out of the sky, or to have floated from the mist that rose above the tumbling water of the river.

“Can my ears have fooled me?” was his thought.

“Hello!” he called. “What is it?”

A faint mumbling seemed to come in answer to this, but he could not locate the sound nor distinguish the words.

He rode up and down the trail, looking over into the cañon and along its timbered slope; he let his eyes wander over the rocky hillsides opposite the cañon.

“The wind is fooling me!” was his thought. Yet he was not satisfied to let it go at that; so he dismounted, tied his horse, and swung down the incline of the cañon for a number of yards, and there reaching a shelf of rock, he bent over the river and listened. Then he heard it again—a cry for help.

This time it seemed to be above him, almost over his head; and it sounded so startlingly clear that he could have fancied that the lips that made it were at his elbow.

“Yes,” he said, starting up and staring around. “Where are you? I see no one.”

The call rose louder and clearer, so clear that it was absolutely startling. Apparently, the one making the cry had, for the first time, become aware that the call for help had reached human ears.

“Here I am, right here! Help! I’m right here—in this tree!”

Buffalo Bill rose to his feet and stared hard at the tree before him. It was within six yards of him, higher up toward the level where lay the trail; and the voice had seemed to come from the heart of it. Yet he could see no hole in the tree.

It was a large, stubby oak, wide branching and low; its thick boughs extended along the cañon slope, forming there a massy shade.

“Yes!” he said, jumping toward it. “In the tree? Where?”

The voice seemed now to gurgle, and again the answer was so indistinct that Buffalo Bill climbed up to the tree, and walked around it, determined to find an opening, if there was one.

“In the tree?” he asked. “In this tree?”

He kicked on it and hammered on it with his knuckles.

“Yes!” the voice now screamed, seeming to be right before him. “I’m—fast—in—this—consarned—tree! Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p!”

“Yes!” said the scout again, shouting the word. “How did you get in? And how can I reach you?”

“I—fell—in! Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p!”

“Fell in? How? When——”

“Fell in at the top, you fool! Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p!”

The voice had a strange, quavering sound, high-keyed and singular.

“Fell in from the top!” The scout looked at the thick top of the tree. “Well, this must be investigated!”

He began to climb the tree, using his lariat to aid him, looping it around the tree and around his body, thus assisting himself materially in making the ascent. He climbed rapidly in this way, and was soon in the lower branches.

The voice continued to call, sometimes sounding loud and clear, and then almost falling, or seeming to fall, to shrill whispers.

He fancied these changes were due to the wind that roared through the top of the tree, carrying the sound first one way and then another.

In a very short time he was in the matted top of the oak, hanging over the cañon. Then, to his amazement, he saw before him a large hole, such as a bear might have used. The calls were coming from this hole.

He looked into it, but the hole was black as pitch, and he could see nothing. However, the words of the person down in it seemed now to be shot at him as if from the muzzle of a gun.

“Help! H-e-l-p! H-e-l-p! I’m in the tree; and I——”

“Yes—yes! I’m here to help you. How far down are you? I can’t see you.”

“Something’s stoppin’ up the hole now; it’s a bear mebbe! Help! H-e-l-p!”

“I am shutting the light out, I suppose. I want to help you. If I lower my lariat can you get hold of it? Then perhaps I can pull you out, or assist you to get out.”

The calls changed in their character; the person in the tree had become aware that some one was at the opening, and that this some one was proffering assistance.

“Drap yer rope, then!” the voice shrieked. “I kin climb it, mebbe.”

The scout lowered the noose end of his lariat into the hole.

“Just place the noose under your arms,” he instructed, “and I can help you out.”

He felt the rope jerked, and then the voice shouted:

“All O. K. down here; now h’ist away. You’re a stranger, but a friend in need; and a friend in need is wuth a dozen angels any day o’ the week!”

Buffalo Bill began to haul on the rope, and was instantly aware that the individual in the tree was ascending. There was much scratching, sputtering, and fussing, and many singular exclamations; but slowly the tree prisoner ascended. Then the scout beheld the top of a head, surmounted by a queer hat, or bonnet; so that, at that first glance, he thought he had an Indian in the loop of the lariat.

However, when the neck and shoulders, and then the body of the prisoner appeared, he saw that he had drawn a woman out of the tree.

The fact was amazing, and this woman was as singular a creature as he had ever seen: being a tall, raw-boned, awkward female, with a vinegary countenance, and features as homely as if they had been copied from some comic monthly.

“Hello!” she sputtered, as she clutched the edge of the hole and began to draw herself out. “This here is what I calls an unfort’nit condition fer a lady to be in. B’ jings, it is! An’ I reckon I’ve et a peck o’ dirt and rotten wood, into the barg’in!” She spat pieces of wood out of her mouth, revealing a row of fanglike teeth. “And I’ve that mussed up my Sunday clo’es that I won’t be able to go to church nex’ Sunday!”

At this she cackled in a strange way, as if she had uttered a good joke.

With the scout’s assistance, she crawled out of the hole and dropped down in the nest of broad limbs that were matted together in front of the hole, forming there a sort of shelf of verdure.

“Well, may I be switched if I was ever in sich a reedicklus situation before!” she grumbled. “I reckon you never before pulled a lady out o’ the top of a tree?”

The scout was staring at her most ungallantly.

“I didn’t,” he admitted. “I must beg your pardon if I was rough while hauling on that rope.”

“Oh, I ain’t as light as swan’s-down!” she cackled. “I’m purty hefty; and heftier still when I git my mad up and git in a fight.”

“But how did you get in such a place?” he was forced to demand.

“I fell in.”

“Fell in?”

“You kin understand words, can’t ye? Yes, I fell in.”

“But——”

“Well, I clim’ up here last night, thinkin’ it’d be a safer place to spend the night in than down on the ground, with wolves howlin’ ’round, and mebbe road agents perambulatin’ along the trail. It looked like a good sort of a nest up here, and I thought I’d try it fer safety; fer I cal’lated that if a wild cat, er a panther, got into the tree, I could git down, mebbe; and I wasn’t as afeard o’ them as I was o’ the wolves I heerd howlin’. And so I clim’ up. And while mussin’ ’round here on these limbs, tryin’ to make myself comfortable, I slipped into that hole, hurtin’ my arm some; and then, fust thing I knowed, I was down in the holler of the tree inside, and couldn’t git out ag’in.”

She laughed in a mirthless way.

“Well, you better believe that I was scai’t some, when I found I couldn’t git out. I wiggled and I waggled, but it didn’t do no good; and there I had to stay.”

She laughed again, with that singular, mirthless cackle.

“Well, I was safe enough from wolves and varmints of that kind; you’d better believe I was. I didn’t hear a wolf, ner did a single wild cat er panther try to pay me a visit; but when mornin’ come I couldn’t git out.

“I reckon I hollered so much that if the breath I wasted doin’ it was all collected, it’d fill the sails of the British navy. But it didn’t do a mite o’ good, seemed like, till bime-by I reckon you heerd me.”

“Yes, I heard you. Your yells were enough to wake the dead!”

She glanced down into the hole and shivered.

“Now, if you’ll permit me, I’ll try to help you down to the ground,” he said.

“Oh, law, I kin make that all right; that don’t trouble me a little bit!”

To show that it did not, she swung down from the nest of branches, and then, grappling the tree as if she were a man, she slid down to the ground. The scout followed her, and soon stood beside her on the shelving slope.

“Now I’ll help you up to the trail,” he said. “You must be pretty well exhausted by this time, and——”

“Lawk, I don’t need no help!”

She began to scramble up to the trail.

The scout accompanied her, assisting her as much as she would let him; and soon they stood together in the trail.

CHAPTER II. PIZEN JANE, OF CINNABAR.

Having arrived at a position in the trail, Buffalo Bill looked more carefully at the woman rescued from her strange prison in the hollow oak overhanging the cañon of the river.

The woman looked as intently at him, with black eyes that snapped and burned. She inspected him from top to toe, critically, as if trying to size him up and determine what character of man he was. Then a sudden fiery wrath blazed in her black eyes, her lips became pinched, and then opened in one of her strange cackles.

“I guess,” she snapped, “that you’re the man that’s playin’ the fake Buffler Bill trick about here. And if ye aire, then I dunno but I’d ruther been left in the tree than to have been helped by ye. Aire you him, er ain’t ye?”

Buffalo Bill could not repress a smile at her manner.

“I haven’t the pleasure of knowing who this fake Buffalo Bill is, but I assure you that I am the real Buffalo Bill,” he said. “My name is Cody, as, perhaps, you have heard, and——”

She cackled again, scoffing at his declaration.

“What’s the proof of it?” she demanded.

“I shall not try to present any proof, other than my word.”

“And if you’re the fake Buffler, yer word ain’t good furder’n a man could sling a steer by the tail. You ain’t the fake Buffler?”

“No, madam, I am not.”

“Why do ye call me madam, and how’d ye know I ever was married, to desarve that title? Simply because I’m oldish and have lost my good looks? You don’t know me?”

“I haven’t the honor.”

He touched his hat again, but a smile disturbed the gravity of his face.

“Well, I’m Pizen Jane, frum Cinnabar. Never heerd o’ me?”

“I never had the honor to——”

“Shucks! Don’t be so perlite. Perliteness is due, mebbe, to young girls with red cheeks and yaller hair, and eyes that keeps rollin’ at the men; but it don’t b’long in talkin’ to a woman like me, that’s seen the world, and had all her beauty knocked off her long ago.”

“I only meant——”

“Don’t mean, then, when speakin’ to me; jes’ speak yer thoughts. I know I’m homely, and my temper ain’t any purtier than my face. I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar.”

He smiled.

“I’m very glad to know you, and wish to assure you again that I am William F. Cody, known to many as Buffalo Bill.”

“Jes’ the same, I’m goin’ to watch ye!”

“That’s kind of you.”

“You mean to say by that it ain’t kind o’ me, after you yankin’ me outer that hole? Well, I thank you fer that. Where you goin’?”

“I was on my way from Cinnabar.”

“Yisterday I was, too; but I got stuck in that hole, and that brought my journeyin’ to a close. I reckon, if you’re goin’ on, I’ll go with ye. You’ve got a hoss there.”

“A very good animal.”

“Glad of it; fer I’m goin’ to ride behind ye on that hoss. I don’t reckon you’ve got anything to eat?”

“Yes, I have food in my saddle pouches. I will get it for you.”

“I’m that hungry I could eat sawdust! Fer, ye see, I didn’t have any supper las’ night, an’ no breakfast this mornin’. If ’twasn’t so fur, I’d git down to that river and git me a drink.”

“I have a water bottle, which you’re welcome to.”

“Law suz, you’re a reg’lar travelin’ hotel! Well, I’m glad of it; fer I’m that hungry and dry that I can’t think straight. When I git somethin’ to eat and drink, I’ll try to see if my hat is on straight, and if my clothes sets right. Shouldn’t wonder if they don’t, sense my experience in that tree.”

She continued to talk while he procured the food and the water; and then she sat down on the ground and devoured the things he gave her. While doing it she now and then looked at him, with covert glances, and now and then she mumbled, as if talking to herself.

The scout was undeniably puzzled by this woman. In his experience on the border he had encountered many strange characters. Sometimes he had found that their eccentricity was assumed as a mask and covered some hidden design, or concealed a scoundrelly and criminal past. In a few cases he had found that an assumed eccentricity concealed an officer of the law, who was masked in that way for detective work.

After brushing the crumbs out of her lap in a thoughtful manner, she looked up.

“Was you tellin’ me the truth when you said you was the ginuine Buffalo Bill?”

“Nothing but the truth,” he answered.

Her face still showed doubt.

“Lemme ask ye another question er two.”

“As many as you like.”

“Did you ever hear of a wuthless critter named Pete Sanborn?”

“I never did.”

“He used to run a little hash house down at Cinnabar, only he was too lazy to run it, and his wife done the work. He liked to gamble better than he did to work, and he’d ruther pick a man’s pockets than to git money in any other way.”

“A fellow to keep away from.”

“Well, he was. I knowed him to my sorrow. He done things lately a good deal wuss’n any of them things. I hope vigilantes will git him, and finish him.”

Her blackened and straggling teeth came together with a vindictive click.

“And you never,” she went on, “heerd of a young feller called Pool Clayton? His reg’lar name was Bruce, but he played pool and billiards so much that the fellers got to callin’ him Pool; and I reckon it fit him, fer the name stuck. He’s a young man, not much more’n a boy, and I think he knowed you!”

The final sentence she shot at the scout as if it were an accusation.

“I never happened to meet him, so far as my knowledge goes.”

“He’s a young man, and rather good lookin’; more weak than really mean, I should say; and goin’ to the dogs fast, last accounts I had of him.”

“I never heard of him.”

She brushed her lap again, as if there were more crumbs in it, and looked down, as if taking time to gather her thoughts, or think of more questions. Finally she rose, shaking out her skirt.

“Now, if you don’t ’bject, I’d like fer ye to give me a lift on yer hoss, if he’ll kerry double. It’s askin’ a good deal, I know, but——”

“I shall be happy to let you ride on my horse, and I will walk; or you may mount behind my saddle, if that pleases you.”

She laughed then, cackling out in the manner that had first attracted him. It was not musical, nor even suggestive of good humor, though the woman apparently meant that it should suggest the last.

“I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar,” she said again, “and I hope you won’t rue the day when you fust met me. You won’t, if you’re straight. But if you’re not reelly Buffler Bill, but the fake that mebbe ye aire, you’ll not think meetin’ me was good fer yer health.”

Then she seemed to feel that this was harsh, when the things he had done for her were considered.

“I reckon I’d ought to beg yer pardon,” she said apologetically. “If I say things you don’t like, fergit ’em. I’m loose-jawed, and my tongue wags sometimes like a splinter in a windstorm. But if you understood the things that’s made me what I am, you wouldn’t think it a mite strange if I was tryin’ to shoot yer head off, instead of talkin’ ca’m to you. You desarve it, if the things I’ve heerd about ye aire true.”

“I hope to merit your good opinion,” said the scout, much amused by the freedom with which she “wagged” her tongue.

“You’ll git it, if ye desarve it; and if ye don’t desarve it, then you’ll git what you do desarve; and don’t you fail to recklect that! Fer I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar.”

“It seems a strange name,” he said, bringing up his horse.

“Well, I’m Pizen, to some people, ’cause I stand fer my rights and don’t let nobody tromp on me. I’m Pizen to men who don’t do right, you bet! And I’ll tell ye now, what mebbe I’d ought to keep to myself, that I’m on the warpath, and that I’m standin’ ready to shoot full of holes a certain man as soon as I meet him. Rejoice that you ain’t him.”

“You don’t seem so very warlike,” said the scout, smiling at her. “I don’t mind telling you that.”

“That’s a compliment, I s’pose? Well, I don’t desarve it.” She looked the horse over critically. “Aire you goin’ right on through the mountains?”

“Yes.”

“It’s nigh two days’ journey!”

“Yes, I know it.”

“And this trail is filled with road agents, they say; road agents that lay fer everything that comes along, and shoots men as if they wasn’t more than wolves.”

“Yes, it’s a dangerous trail.”

“What if you’re held up?”

“I shall defend myself; but I’m trusting not to be.”

“I reckon I can trust ye; and if I can’t trust ye I can watch ye. Hold the hoss’ head, and I’ll sail up to his back.”

The scout held the horse by the head, and with an agility that was surprising, disdaining his aid, she put a foot in the stirrup and mounted to the animal’s back, seating herself behind the saddle.

“I’m spryer’n I look,” she said, “otherwise I couldn’t got into that tree where ye found me. Now, if you’ll mount, we’ll jog along, and you can tell me more about yerself while we’re goin’. I’ll say to you that Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar, is searchin’ fer somebody she hopes to find; and if she finds him, interestin’ times aire billed to foller fer all concerned. That’s why I’m on this trail; what you’re on it fur ain’t appeared yit, so fur as I know.”

Buffalo Bill mounted, smiling at the woman’s naïve manner of trying to “pump” him.

Then they jogged on, as quaint a pair as the trail had seen in many a day.

CHAPTER III. CHASED BY WOLVES.

Because of the intense midsummer heat in that desert region, Buffalo Bill did not journey far that morning, but relieved his horse of its double burden long before noon, and took shelter from the burning sun in the shady depths of the cañon, at a point where its sides were scalable for man and beast.

Pizen Jane seemed impervious to the heat, and declared her anxiety to go on. But she descended into the cañon, and there helped the scout eat the food which remained after her famine feast of the morning.

Throughout the journey, and now, as she and the scout rested, she asked strange questions without number, all tending to show that she still did not believe he was the man he represented himself to be.

What her own intentions and plans were she cloaked with much cleverness, though she talked all around the subject, drowning it in a very sea of words.

Buffalo Bill gained the idea, however, that she had suffered some wrong at the hands of some man, or men, or that some bitter grief and disappointment had come to her; for the avenging, or righting, of which she had set forth alone on this dangerous trail. In addition, it seemed that she suspected him of being in some manner concerned in the wrong done her, and that she had proofs of it she more than once hinted.

“I begin to fear you are crazy, madam,” he said, at length, when she had vexed him with her many hints of personal wrongdoing. “But please remember that I never met you before, and know absolutely nothing of any of the men you so veiledly speak of. I might know more, if you would be more open in what you say.”

“And then you’d know too much, if you ain’t the reel Buffler!” she cackled. “Pizen Jane may be homely lookin’, and no doubt she is, but she ain’t no fool.”

They did not go on until the cool shadows of evening covered the trail. They continued the journey far into the night, going forward by the light of the moon.

The hour was late, when Pizen Jane gave a convulsive leap, and threw her arms around the scout’s body, with a quick motion.

“Did ye hear that?” she asked breathless.

The scout drew rein.

“I heard nothing,” said he. “What did you——”

“There it is ag’in! Wolves, as I’m a mortal sinner! And they’re answering each other, I’ll be bound. Jes’ listen at ’em!”

The scout could not fail to hear them now, for their howls swept out in a wild chorus.

“Wolves?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Comin’ this way?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

She observed that in spite of his careless reply he touched up the horse with the spur.

The wolves were in two bands, apparently; one band on the mountainside, off on the left, and the other behind, in the trail, or in the river cañon. Those on the hillside were nearest, and their howls soon became frightful.

“Chasin’ us?” she asked.

“We’ll hope not.”

“Well, I know they aire! Ye can’t fool me. I’ve had experience. This ain’t the fust time I’ve heerd ’em.”

She put her hand into her bosom and drew out a revolver.

“This ain’t big enough to kill many wolves with,” she remarked; “but it’s big enough to kill me, which it’ll do if the wolves should seem about to git me. I’d ruther die by a bullet than to have them critters tear me into giblets. Ugh! Hear ’em yellin’!”

It was not a pleasant sound, and again the scout touched the horse up with the spur.

The country lay more open before him, a fact of which he was glad. The moonlight and open country lessened the danger from the wolves; for, like all evil creatures, they loved the darkness rather than the light.

The horse was now flying along, oblivious of its double burden. It not only heard the wolves, but had scented them, and was frightened.

The howling drew nearer, and soon the wolves, sweeping down from the hills, were seen running along the trail just behind the fugitives, and off on the left, beyond revolver shot. They grew constantly bolder and bolder, so that soon they were close upon the horse. They seemed to recognize the helplessness of the fugitives, pitted against so many; for the wolf gains courage from numbers, and is boldest when in big packs.

Soon the wolves became so reckless that they dashed into the trail, partly surrounding the horse. Then they began to leap at its nose, and sought to strike their teeth into its legs for the purpose of hamstringing it, after the manner in which they were accustomed to bring down deer and other game.

The scout shot one that sprang at the horse’s head; and then dropped another that had leaped to the horse’s haunches.

“Downed ’em, ye did!” cried Pizen Jane. “Good for you! It makes me ’most love ye, Buffler, to see you drop ’em like that.”

He made no answer save a grunt of wrath.

“Buffler,” Pizen Jane cackled, “I know you’re enj’yin’ my society, even if the wolves is chasin’ us!”

“I should feel better if you were not here,” he answered, quite frankly.

“Why, Buffler?”

“Because of the wolves. You have no need to ask.”

He fired at another.

It fell with a yelp, being only wounded; but immediately its ferocious comrades sprang on it, tearing it to pieces almost instantly, being rendered savage beyond belief by the scent of its flowing blood.

Even the bold scout shuddered as he saw that. He had seen its like more than once, yet it never failed to impress him with a sense of the awful ferocity of wolves when maddened in that way, and of his terrible peril. He knew that if his horse fell, or if either of the riders should be thrown to the ground, a horrible death could only result.

“Buffler,” said Pizen Jane at length, as he brought down another wolf, thus feeding it to its comrades, “I know this trail, havin’ been over it before, and you don’t know it; but there’s a ford right ahead, where the trail dips down and then crosses the river. If you can reach that ford, you can git in the water there and make a stand agin’ ’em wuth while. They’ll git us, otherwise.”

She did not emit that cackling laugh now; in fact, she had begun to appreciate her horrible danger, and was speculating as to its outcome.

“Thank Heaven for that!” said the scout. “Perhaps I can hold them off until the ford is reached.”

He had fired every cartridge out of his revolver, and now drew another.

“Can you reload this one?” he said, passing it back to her, with some cartridges.

“Yes,” she said; “and shoot it, too!”

She proceeded to show that she could, by bringing down a wolf that tried to leap upon the horse, close by her. The claws of the wolf struck through the thick hide of the horse just as she fired, and, contracting in a death clutch, they raked the skin open, so that blood flowed.

The horse gave a jump that came nigh hurling Pizen Jane to the ground; but she threw her arms round the scout and held on like grim death.

A dozen wolves had leaped on the one she shot, and were rending and devouring it; but others came on, more frantically determined than ever to pull down the horse, now, that they scented the hot blood which streamed from its flank.

Buffalo Bill brought down one of the pursuing wolves, and Pizen Jane another.

Though the living ones stopped to rend the dead and dying, the delay was brief enough.

Yet it enabled the sorely pressed horse to gain on its fiendish foes.

“The ford’s jist ahead of ye now!” Pizen Jane screamed in the ear of Buffalo Bill.

In another minute he saw before him the darkly flowing waters of the river, which had emerged from its cañon bed and here flowed through a quiet landscape.

Buffalo Bill spurred the frantic and terrified horse into the river until the water came up over the girth.

“Draw up your feet,” he said to Pizen Jane.

“I ain’t neither sugar ner salt, to be melted away by a little water,” she declared; “and I dunno but I could swim if I was driv’ to it; so don’t worry about me. Jist so we git out o’ reach o’ them screechin’ varmints, is all I ask.”

The pursuing and infuriated wolves dashed up to the edge of the water.

Buffalo Bill turned in the saddle and dropped one of them by a well-directed shot, and then wounded another.

The ferocious survivors began to tear at the fallen wolves as soon as they were down, so that within a few minutes nothing was left of them but shining, dislocated bones. The sight was enough to make the scout and the woman shudder.

Buffalo Bill urged the horse still farther out into the river, until the water stood midway of its sides.

The wolves on the shore seemed, within a few minutes, to number scores, and even hundreds. Their snapping teeth, fiery eyes, and struggling movements made the shore a writhing mass of fiendish forms. Some of them dashed into the water and began to swim out to the horse; but they were at a disadvantage in the water; for they could not there make the tremendous leaps that would carry them to the horse’s back, nor could they move quickly enough to baffle the revolver fire of the scout and Pizen Jane.

Pizen Jane was reloading and firing the revolver the scout had given her, with a coolness and courage that would have befitted a man.

Between them they succeeded in shooting every wolf that swam close to the horse.

The dark bodies of dead wolves bobbed in the stream below the ford, where there were some eddies, that, catching them, whirled them slowly round and round.

But the fate of the wolves already slain had small deterrent effect on those still living, and their numbers seemed inexhaustible. Where they came from could hardly be told; they seemed to spring out of the very ground; and they ran snapping and yelping along the banks, on both sides of the river now, while at intervals a few of the most desperate plunged in and tried to reach the horse and its riders.

Generous as his supply of ammunition was, Buffalo Bill began to fear it would soon be exhausted.

Suddenly, while the wolves still raved on the shores of the moonlit river, and dashed into the water in efforts to reach the horse, a wild scream was heard near by, which had on them a marvelous effect. It was the scream of a panther. The big beast had scented the flowing blood, and doubtless had come for a feast.

The leaping forms of the wolves dropped out of sight with almost startling suddenness, as the lithe body of the panther came down the hillside with springing leaps.

“Glory be!” cried Pizen Jane, with an almost hysterical cackle. “The painter has druv ’em off.”

The “painter,” as she called the panther, came on toward the river, not at first seeing the horse midway of the stream. In another moment it would have been cracking the bones of the dead wolves, if the horse had not been startled by its coming and began to plunge in the water, making a good deal of noise.

The panther stopped, throwing up its head and looking down at the horse. It was startled, and seemed too surprised for a moment to move. Then, with a quick leap, it turned aside; and in another instant it, too, was lost to sight in the darkness.

“Glory be!” Pizen Jane mumbled.

Buffalo Bill saw now that she was trembling, as if her nerves were exhausted.

“Shall we ride out now?” he asked.

Before she could answer, the sharp report of a revolver, or rifle, sounded. It was some distance away; yet the stillness which had followed the cessation of the wolf attack made it possible for sounds to carry a long distance. Following the first shot, came others in quick succession.

“Some other pore critter attacked by them varmints!” Pizen Jane interpreted.

“Yes.”

“I hope they don’t git him, if he’s honest and hon’rable; I hope he’s nigh to the water, and can git into it, as we did.”

The scout was listening for a repetition of the shots.

“I hope a painter will come ’long to his ’sistance, as it did to ours.”

The shots did not sound again.

“They’ve killed him, er he’s druv ’em away, er mebbe the painter skeered ’em. I’m swearin’ by painters, frum this time on!”

Pizen Jane’s tongue would wag, no matter what happened.

“If I thought we could aid him, and he needed aid now, I’d try to go to his help,” said the generous scout.

“But we don’t know where he is!”

“He’s out in that direction, somewhere.”

“And he may be a road agent, or even an Injun. More likely to be, than an honest man.”

“Very true; yet I shouldn’t want any human being to be torn alive by wolves.”

“It’d serve some of ’em right,” avowed Pizen Jane, with a grimness that was not pleasant. “Some on ’em that I know of, and am lookin’ fer, ought to be chopped into giblets. If the wolves should kill ’em, it’d save me the crime of murder when I meet ’em.”

When the shots did not come again, and nothing occurred to indicate who the man was, or what had happened to him, the scout abandoned his desire to go to his aid.

He feared the return of the wolves; and so he kept his horse in the stream, though the beast was soon shaking from the chill of the cold water.

“It’s a tarnal queer thing, Buffler, ther way that animiles do,” averred the woman, dropping into a mood of philosophy. “The wolves warn’t afeared of us, even when we laid ’em out on the shore like chopped corn, though they was skeered o’ that painter; and the painter that wasn’t afeared of the wolves, was afeared of us. Varmints aire that queer there’s no knowin’ what to expect of ’em.”

For nearly an hour the scout kept his shivering horse in the stream; but when it was seen that the wolves were not likely to return soon he rode out of the water.

On the shore he went into camp, and there he built a fire. The fire would help to keep the wolves at bay; and also it was needed to enable him and Pizen Jane to dry their wet clothing.

He screened the fire as well as he could; yet he knew it might be seen; and he was in a land where he could expect to meet enemies in human shape as terrible as the wolves and as little given to mercy. To guard against surprise, he for a time stood in the darkness beyond the rim of the firelight, watching there, while the woman by the fire dried and warmed herself.

Far away he heard wolves howling, and they may have been some of those who had pursued him; but the man who had fired the shots did not make himself known.

The stars and the moon swung their slow way westward, and the night grew late. At last the scout returned to the fire, fed it with wood, and sat down.

Pizen Jane had fallen asleep, but his return aroused her, and she raised herself on her elbow.

“Buffler,” she said, smoothing back her tangled hair, “what aire ye goin’ to do now?”

“In what way?” he asked. “When?”

“Why, to-morrer?”

“I hardly know.”

“Well, I know you’re lookin’ fer road agents!”

“You seem to think you are a mind reader,” he declared, with a laugh.

“I am. I kin read yer mind same’s my own.”

“What am I thinking of?”

“That you wish Pizen Jane was in purgatory, er some other furrin country!”

He laughed again, and she laughed with him.

“Hardly that, of course.”

“You’re wishin’ I wasn’t with you?”

“Your society is very pleasant,” was his gallant statement; “but you will admit that this is hardly the sort of country where a woman can feel safe.”

“And that’s why I’m goin’ to hang to ye. You can’t git rid of me. I’ll cling to ye like the bark on a tree, and you can’t help it. Fer, ye see, you’re huntin’ road agents, and so am I. And if you find ’em, and I’m with ye, why, I’ll find ’em, too. And that’s what I want.”

He smiled into the firelight.

“I thought you were of the opinion that I was a fake, and you meant to cling to me for the purpose of finding out?”

“Well, that is one reason,” she admitted, with blunt frankness. “If you ain’t the reel Buffler Bill, why, I want to know that, too. And then I’ll be makin’ things mighty int’restin’ fer ye.”

She laughed again, sliding from her stern grimness and threatening into laughing good humor.

“I’ll watch a while, if ye want to sleep,” she said. “I’ve had my forty winks, and can git along now till morning.”

The scout felt sure that he could trust this woman not to harm him in his sleep. She still mystified him, and he could not yet fathom her purpose in being there; for he did not credit her with all the motives she professed. However, he trusted her, and so after a while he lay down for a time, leaving Pizen Jane on guard by the dying camp fire.

The horse was picketed on its lariat a few yards away, and was certain to give an alarm if wolves or other wild animals approached.

CHAPTER IV. A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

In the morning Buffalo Bill shot a jack rabbit, and they breakfasted on that. Bones of wolves on the opposite shore gave evidence of the terrible night battle with those creatures.

To the woman it seemed almost a horrible dream, and not a reality, with the sun now shining brightly, and not a wolf or other harmful beast in sight.

“I feel as good as new,” she said, in her queer way; “only a bit stiff in the j’ints.” She walked along the river for exercise. “Now what ye goin’ to do?” she asked, coming back, while the scout watered his horse at the stream.

“I’m going first to the point where those shots sounded in the night.”

“D’ye reckon ye can find it?”

“I hope so. I located the direction pretty accurately.”

“But you couldn’t tell how fur they was off.”

“No; but if we get the direction and keep going we’ll come to the place, by and by.”

“Yes; that’s so, too. I s’pose you’re wishin’ I’d go back to the town this mornin’?”

“Not since you said you didn’t intend to.”

He smiled at her. She interested him, and he was still studying her, trying to determine her character and what she really meant by thus clinging to him.

“Well, I’m goin’ to hang to ye; and if you should say I couldn’t, I’d go anyhow. I think I’m takin’ a fancy to yer. If I was a younger woman now——”

“What?”

“I think I’d try to marry ye, if I found out you was what ye pretend to be, and honest.”

“You flatter me,” he said, with a smile.

“Do I? Well, I don’t mean it.”

He helped her to the back of his horse, though she said she needed no assistance; and they rode on again, going now in the direction of those mysterious shots.

They had progressed a mile before Buffalo Bill found what he was looking for—indications of the presence of men.

Hoofprints of horses showed, and the tracks of men, a considerable body of them. But the tracks were nearly a day old, and could none of them have been made by the man who fired the shots. There was, too, the ashes of an old camp fire. Buffalo Bill inspected that with considerable interest.

“Ah!” he said, as he looked about. “Some one came along after these men had left; and, finding this old camp and the ashes, he built a new fire here; and that was last night; and, whoever he was, he did the shooting.”

“At wolves?”

“Yes, I think so; that seems the most likely guess. Some of the wolves troubled him, and he shot at them.”

He began to search beyond the limits of the camp, hoping to find wolf tracks which would prove his theory.

He stopped this search on observing a soil-stained letter which had been stepped on by a horse, whose hoofs had driven it into the earth, half-covering it.

He took it up and looked at it. To his astonishment, the address side of the envelope bore the name of Nick Nomad.

“Nomad!” he said, staring around as if he half expected to see his old pard of the plains and mountains rise out of the ground there. “Nomad! He was here.”

He looked about; then took from the envelope the letter it held; for the envelope had already been torn open. It was merely a note, on some matter of business of no importance.

“Nomad dropped it by chance. No; perhaps he dropped it purposely.”

He began to search the ground closely.

“What ye found?” called Pizen Jane, who was watching him.

“A letter from an old friend.”

“Funny kind of a post office to be gittin’ letters out of!” she observed. “What’s it like?—a love letter?”

The scout ignored her question and went on with his search.

He found wolf tracks out beyond the point where the ground had been torn by the hoofs of horses, thus establishing his belief that the man who had camped alone there during the night had been troubled by the wolves, and had fired upon them.

“I wonder if that man could have been Nomad?” was his thought. He dismissed it in a moment. “No; Nomad is too wary to have gone on without inspecting my camp by the river; and, if he had inspected it, he would have discovered me and made himself known.”

He searched again at the point where the letter had been trampled into the soil. This examination convinced him that the horse that had stepped on the letter had been of the horses that were there two nights before.

“Whoever the man was who did the shooting he was not Nomad.”

After a while he returned to where the woman had stood watching him.

“What ye found?” she demanded.

He showed her the letter.

“Nick Nomad is an old friend of mine. We have hunted and trailed together more times than I can tell you; and he’s true as steel. I thought at first he did that shooting. But I’m convinced he did not. A body of men camped here two nights ago; and at that time, or before that time, Nomad was here, and dropped this letter.”

“Some other man might have had it and dropped it,” she said.

“Yes, that is so. Some other man might have dropped it.”

“Road agents, mebbe. He might have been robbed, and they may have tuck that letter from him, with other things.”

“You’re good at guessing,” the scout admitted. “All of that may be true. I’m of the opinion the large party camping here two nights ago were road agents.”

“He might have j’ined ’em?”

“Impossible. What I’m afraid of is that he was with them as a prisoner.”

“Glory be! Ye don’t mean it?”

“He’s shrewd; and if he was their prisoner he probably dropped this letter, to let any one who found it know the fact, or guess it. He doubtless had no chance to write, or to drop anything else.”

“Road agents!” she said, looking about.

“And now your question of what I am going to do is answered. I’m going to follow the trail of those road agents, even if it is two days old.”

“And the man that camped here alone and done that shootin’ last night?”

“He may have been a road agent, following on their trail; and, if so, he is now riding on to overtake them. We can tell better about that as we go on.”

“Or he may’ve been somebody follerin’ them, same as I am, and you?”

“Very true.”

The scout, though anxious now to go on as fast as possible, did not give over the search of this camping spot until he was sure there was nothing unfound that could aid him.

“Mebbe he’s one o’ the men I’m lookin’ fur,” said Pizen Jane, as she mounted to go on. “I don’t reckon he is, though; ’twould be too much good luck. Luck ain’t been rollin’ my way much lately.”

She cackled in her shrill fashion, as if she thought she had said something funny.

No single trail was observed to leave the main trail, as they went on.

By and by the scout became convinced that Nick Nomad was a prisoner of a gang of outlaws, though he had no solid proof on which to build this belief.

If it had not been for the fact that the letter had been trampled into the ground, showing by that that the horses had been there after it was dropped, he might have thought Nomad had struck the outlaws’ trail, and was following them, for he knew that Nick Nomad was in that country for the sole purpose of running down the road agents and desperadoes that infested it—the same mission that had brought him there.

Buffalo Bill talked of his beliefs and theories with Pizen Jane, for he discovered that she possessed a good fund of hard, common sense, and her judgments were at times valuable.

She agreed with him, when he had pointed out the hoofs, that Nick Nomad had not been following the big trail; and, if that were so, then that he had either been in advance of the outlaws or he was with them. If with them, nothing was surer than that old Nomad was a prisoner.

“We’ll follow this trail until we know the truth,” said the scout.

“Buffler,” she cackled, “I’m with ye! Ye may think that is a joke, but ’tain’t; fer I mean that I’m with ye in spirit, as well as otherwise. And mebbe you’ll allow bimeby that Pizen Jane is a good deal better than she looks, and has got more sense than any man would guess, if he jedged by the way her tongue clacks.”

CHAPTER V. THE CAPTURE.

Nick Nomad, the old trapper and mountainman, had received word from his famous pard, Buffalo Bill, informing him that the latter intended to go into the desert country that lay near the base of the Sepulcher Mountains, for the purpose, if possible, of breaking up the road-agent organization known to exist there.

The mountains of the gruesome name deserved the title of Sepulcher. They were barren and forbidding, and held so little water on their desert side that it was as much as a man’s life was worth to get lost in them there, for he was pretty certain to die of thirst. Yet the Sepulcher Mountains held gold in paying quantities, and that lure was drawing men from all quarters of the country.

Gold is such a magnet that, no matter where it is, men will go to get it, even under the arctic circle; and if it could be certainly known that gold is at the north pole, money would soon be found to equip expeditions of such magnitude that the secret of even that hitherto unassailable point would quickly be laid bare.

The miners and prospectors who were working in the Sepulcher Mountains, and in the adjacent desert, locally called Death Valley, had been shipping out a good deal of gold, by the stages, and in other ways; and on that gold road agents had been levying heavy tolls.

Yet, knowing this, Nick Nomad had been unaccountably careless, after striking the trail leading into the Sepulcher Mountains. He fancied that the road agents confined their operations rather exclusively to another trail, and to the other side of the mountains, and to the trails that crisscrossed the desert. Hence, he did not adopt his usual precautions. He went to sleep in the open, with a fire burning, curling himself up by it, and there enjoying his pipe in fancied security.

Near by grazed his horse, the famous old Nebuchadnezzar; a horse whose apparent age and decrepitude had to be discounted, or the beholder would be much fooled in him; for, though it seemed that Nebuchadnezzar had about outlived his usefulness and could run no more than a turtle, the old beast was amazingly swift, and also amazingly intelligent. So intelligent was he that old Nick Nomad felt as safe, with Nebuchadnezzar grazing close by, as if the horse had been a trained watch dog sitting guard there.

However, even old Nebuchadnezzar grew sleepy after a while, and lay down on the grass to rest. Being tired that day, for he had journeyed far, he slept quite as heavily as did his wearied master; so that, though his ears were keen, trampling hoofs were almost upon the camp before the fact was thudded by their hoofs into his dull ears, arousing him.

Nebuchadnezzar lifted his head then, and squealed a warning, at the same time scrambling up and snorting in alarm.

Nick Nomad opened his eyes, and bounded to his feet with the agility of a man many years younger. As he did so, he caught up his rifle, an ancient weapon, and swung it round his head.

“Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye!” he grunted. “What’s up?”

He knew on the instant. “Hands up!” came to him out of the darkness, and he heard rifles clicking. Then he saw dimly the figures of mounted men.

He ducked with lightning quickness, sliding across the smoldering fire as he did so, trying thus to reach Nebuchadnezzar. He whistled at the same time in a shrill way, and the knowing beast came running toward him, until stopped by the lariat.

The horse reached the end of the lariat with a jerk, and stood snorting.

“Whoa, Nebby!”

In another minute Nick Nomad would have cut the lariat and been on the back of the old horse; but a rifle rang, and the bullet whistled past his face, making its wind felt, it was so close.

Nomad stopped, then; not because he so much feared for himself, as because he feared for the life of Nebuchadnezzar. He knew that even in the darkness those riflemen could see well enough to shoot down the horse; he was sure they would do it if he tried to get away on its back; and Nebuchadnezzar was as dear to him as his own life. He faced around, swinging his heavy rifle.

“By all ther spooks o’ ther hills, ef I don’t let daylight through ye, ef ye shoot Nebby!” he yelled. “’Ware thar, and don’t do it!”

A man was riding toward him, and at the man’s heels came others.

“Hands up!”

“And drap my gun? Waal, ye don’t know me, if ye think I’ll do it. Waugh!”

“Put down that gun!”

“I’ll do that, yes; and willin’, see ’t I can’t do nothin’ else. But I shoots ther fust cuss thet lays a hand in harm on my ole hoss.”

The man drew rein, and some of those behind him snickered at Nomad’s words.

“Who aire ye?”

“Waugh! I’m a better man than ther critter that asks ther question!”

“No foolishness! Hands up! And give your name!”

One of the man’s followers, who had ridden near enough to see Nomad, now announced the old trapper’s name.

“Nick Nomad,” he said; “ther friend of Buffler Bill! And may the devil roast him!”

“Put down yer gun!” the leader commanded.

The tone was so menacing that Nomad saw he must comply, if he didn’t want to feel the lead of the outlaw’s revolver. So he laid the old rifle on the ground, though he did it with a sigh. Then he folded his arms on his breast, and stood erect before the outlaws, an impressive figure, in spite of his small stature, wizened face, and his eccentric dress.

He was a typical trapper of the old time in appearance, with his fringed and greasy leggings, and hunting shirt of cloth and deerskin, and the round beaver-skin cap on his head, the cap being as greasy and soiled as his clothing.

“Now, what is it ye want of me?” he said; though the manner in which the announcement of his name had been received told him that these men were his enemies; and he was sure they were road agents, the very desperadoes he had come there to seek with his old pard, Buffalo Bill.

The men sprang from their saddles and surrounded him.

Old Nebuchadnezzar backed from them to the end of his picket rope, and snorted indignantly and fearfully.

“Aire you Nick Nomad, as he says?” demanded the leader, peering into the trapper’s face.

Nomad fancied that lying would gain him nothing.

“Happy ter say thet I am,” he declared. “I reckon it ain’t a name ter be ashamed on, along this hyar border; seein’ thet Injuns and outlaws never yit liked ther sound of it.”

“Give up yer weapons.”

“Thar’s my gun.”

“But yer other weapons—yer knife and pistols.”

“And then what?” the old man asked. “Mebbe ye’ll be wantin’ me ter give up my life next?”

“Surrender yer weapons!” was shouted at him.

Nomad was driven to the conviction that this surrender meant his death; but, if he was to die, he preferred to do it in more heroic fashion than that.

He sprang from the ground, as the outlaw leader bent toward him; and his foot, catching the man under the chin, hurled him back against the men behind him, throwing them into sudden confusion.

Nomad, the next instant, was leaping away.

He did not run toward Nebuchadnezzar, preferring to take the chances of bullets alone, so strongly did he love his horse.

Bullets followed, whizzing through the air round his head.

The outlaws jumped in chase of him, yelling like Indians.

Nomad stumbled, as he thus leaped along, and fell to the ground.

It was a good thing for him; for bullets swept through the air over the spot where he dropped, and some of them would have struck him if he had remained in an upright position.

He was trying to rise, when one of the outlaws sprang on him, landing astride of his back, and almost knocking the breath out of him. This outlaw threw his arms round Nomad’s neck, and yelled for help; and, other outlaws piling on him at once, the old man was forced to submit.

When he had been tied, and sat helpless on the grass, and the light of a hastily built camp fire illuminated the scene, he stared quizzically into the face of the infuriated leader, who stood now before him, boiling with rage.

“If old Nebby once puts his foot in yer face,” said Nomad, “man, you’ll know thet the little love tap I handed ye wa’n’t jes’ nothin’ at all! And what would ye expect? Was I goin’ to stand still and let ye kill me? You’ve got me now; and so I cal’late I can’t help myself.”

Snaky Pete, for it was he, drew a knife.

“I’m tempted to slice ye into mince meat!” he gasped.

“I wouldn’t,” said Nomad coolly; “fer I’ll tell ye right now that I’m too old and tough ter make good mince meat out of.”

The man turned around, fierce in his manner as an enraged grizzly.

“Where’s Pool Clayton?” he snarled.

A young man, a mere stripling, stepped forth from the vociferating crowd.

“Here!” he said.

Nomad looked at him by the light of the fire. He saw a youth of comely appearance, yet with a certain hardness of face that showed a desperate attempt at recklessness.

“You’ve been braggin’ of yer nerve,” said Snaky Pete to the youth. “Hyer’s yer chance to show it!”

Pool Clayton looked at his chief uneasily.

“I don’t think I understand you!” he said, in clear-cut tones that were quite unlike the gruff, thick speech of his companions.

“Ye don’t?”

“No.”

“Well, hyer’s a chance to show yer nerve, and prove that you’re one of us. You need hardenin’. We’ve got this old fool; but we can’t keep him, and we can’t let him go. Git your gun, and put a bullet through him, as he sets there. That’ll finish him, as a warnin’ to others like him; and then we’ll go on.”

The young man became as pale as if he had seen a ghost. He looked about appealingly.

“I—I—can’t do it!” he gasped. “It’s—it’s murder!”

Snaky Pete glared at him.

“You won’t obey orders?”

“Yes—I’m willing to obey orders, but——”

“Then, do what I tell ye!” roared the desperado leader. “Git yer rifle, and put a bullet through this carrion, and show you’re a man, with the nerve of a man.”

Pool Clayton whitened still more, and trembled visibly.

The outlaws pressed close about him, staring into his face, noting this sign of what they considered weakness and cowardice.

Snaky Pete’s eyes glittered like the eyes of the basilisk.

“Do ye hear me?” he yelled.

Clayton half turned about, as if he intended to obey; then stopped.

“I—I can’t do it!” he gasped. “Don’t ask me to.”

Snaky Pete came closer to him, his huge first doubled.

“Do you obey orders?” he shouted.

“Yes—but——”

Crack! Snaky Pete’s heavy fist shot out, and struck the youth full in the face, knocking him down.

Clayton fell, clawing at the air; and then lay still where he had fallen.

The outlaw leader stepped toward him, as if he meant to administer a kick in addition to the blow.

“You’re the one that’s a tarnal coward!” old Nomad muttered. “I never seen a man o’ that kind that wasn’t.”

He was apparently the only calm person there; though it was his life that was threatened.

Snaky Pete lifted his heavy boot to kick Clayton, then repented of his intention.

“Let him lay!” he snarled. “He’ll come ’round all right. And we’ll move on. He ain’t got the spirit of a skunk.”

The outlaws began to get their horses ready for moving on. Snaky Pete walked up to his prisoner. He looked fairly fiendish in the flickering firelight.

“Don’t git gay over this!” he growled. “You’ll go over the range in the morning, just the same. That young skunk will come ’round bimeby and foller on, and then will be meek as a kitten. He’ll finish you with that bullet, and be glad to, before we git through with him.”

The sage old trapper did not answer this brutal speech. He had learned wisdom with his years.

When the desperadoes lifted him to the back of old Nebuchadnezzar the cords slipped from one of his wrists.

He did not try to take advantage of it, so far as attempting an escape was concerned; but in writhing around, as he struggled to straighten up on his horse, he contrived to drop from an inner pocket the letter which Buffalo Bill found.

The shrewd old trapper was sure that sooner or later the keen-eyed scout would hit that trail, and then would find that letter, and he believed that if he could contrive to keep the breath of life in his body until Buffalo Bill was given time to do something, his chances of escape were yet good. Hence, he resolved to do nothing to unduly anger this truculent outlaw chief and his men.

“I kin be as humble as a creepin’ field mouse, when I haf to,” was his thought, “and meek and humble is my lay now; maybe it’ll pull me through.”

When the outlaws went on they left Pool Clayton lying unconscious on the grass, his horse lariated and grazing close by him.

CHAPTER VI. ABANDONED.

When Pool Clayton came to himself, with the darkness about him, except where it was lightened by the dying camp fire, he saw that he was alone—that he had been abandoned.

His horse, grazing close by, tearing noisily at the grass, was the only thing of life near him; but he shuddered when he heard, afar off, the howl of wolves.

“The men have left me!” he said, staggering to his feet.

There was caked blood on his face, and on his shirt, for that blow in the face had caused his nose to bleed freely. He was stiff and sore, and he felt dizzy and wretchedly sick and miserable.

As full recollection came to him, his whole body burned with uncontrollable rage against Snaky Pete and the men who constituted his band of road-agent outlaws.

Clayton glanced round, looked at the sky, and then at the nearly extinct fire.

“They’ve been gone some time,” he said. “And have left me out here, thinking maybe the wolves would get me.”

Then he swore violently, raging against Snaky Pete, whom he loaded with opprobrious names and noisy abuse. By and by he became saner and cooler, though his new hatred of Snaky Pete did not abate.

He lighted a torch of grass at the fire, and looked for the trail of the outlaws, finding it soon.

“Gone on,” he said; “and they’ll camp about morning at the Poplar Bluffs.”

He knew the place, and was sure he could find the outlaws in camp there; but he did not know whether to follow them or not.

In his searching he expected to come upon the body of the old trapper, being fully persuaded that Snaky Pete meant his death.

“They’ll shoot him, and leave him by the trail for the wolves to eat,” he said. “Maybe that’s what the wolves are howling over now.” He shuddered, as when Snaky Pete commanded him to shoot the old man. “I couldn’t do that!” was his thought. “I couldn’t do it!”

He stirred the fire into new life, for its light drove away a certain lonely feeling that troubled him. And he began to think of what he should now do.

“I was a fool for ever joinin’ ’em,” he assured himself, groaning over the memory of Snaky Pete’s brutal blow. “He’ll kill me, mebbe, if I foller ’em; and the boys will make sport of me.”

He was beginning to realize that he was not, after all, cut from the same cloth as these outlaws.

He had been wild in the town, had gambled, and got into bad company; and, being tempted one night, he had gone with an acquaintance and joined Snaky Pete’s band of road agents; being assured by his new friend—one of Snaky Pete’s men—that the life led by this band was one long and gay carouse, with plenty of fun—altogether a desirable life for a young man of courage and spirit; who felt the chafing restraint of law and order.

Pool Clayton had been with the band less than a week, and was finding the life anything but what he had pictured it. The men were rougher and coarser and more brutal than he had imagined; and altogether the delightful stir and excitement had not been what he anticipated. Snaky Pete, whom he knew only too well, had been cruelly harsh, and had told him he was a coward and a milksop, and needed “hardening.”

Already there had been several attempts to “harden” him; that is, to brutalize him, from which he had shrunk. This last attempt, however, had gone beyond anything he had dreamed of; when he was ordered to kill a man in cold blood, just as if that man were no more than a wolf. Clayton had not been able to do it; and this was the result—struck senseless to the ground, and abandoned on the lonely prairie.

“Mebbe I’d better go back to the town,” he said; “I ain’t fit for this.”

But back in the town officers were watching for him for some small offense against the law; and he abandoned the thought of doing that when he recalled the fact.

There seemed nothing he could do except follow the outlaws and rejoin them. He believed that long before he could overtake them the old trapper would be murdered and put out of the way, and that murder, at least, would not be forced on him.

“I s’pose I can bear the boys chaffing and joking me,” he mused. “And I reckon I do need hardening, if I’m to keep with ’em, and lead this life. I reckon I am a sort of milksop and weak.”

Yet he could not feel right toward Snaky Pete. A feeling that was murderous burned in his very soul against the brutal outlaw leader.

“That he should treat me that way—he!—when he’d ought to be my best friend! I wouldn’t joined ’em, but fer the fact that I learned he was the leader; and now to have him treat me that way!”

After a while, when he felt better and stronger, he rose from the fire and got his horse. Then he mounted, and rode away in the direction of Poplar Bluffs, the camping place of which he knew.

His evil tendencies, and evil surroundings and past, had conquered again; he meant to rejoin the road agents, and “face the music,” whatever it might be.

CHAPTER VII. TAUNTS AND JEERS.

Pool Clayton reached Poplar Bluffs, an isolated point on the river, at the foot of a spur of the Sepulcher Mountains, after daylight, but he did not at once venture into the camp. He could not summon up enough courage until he saw a number of outlaws ride away from the camp, and guessed that one of them was Snaky Pete.

When he entered the camp he found but few of the outlaws there, and those few seemed to be under command of a young fellow not much older than himself. This young fellow was a weasel-eyed, rat-faced youth, named Tom Molloy, as desperate a character for his years as one could wish to see.

Moreover, Molloy had no love for Pool Clayton. He had a feeling that Clayton thought himself the better of the two, and it had aroused his dislike and enmity.

“So you’ve come sneakin’ in, have ye?” he sneered, his little eyes gleaming with vindictive animosity. “I shouldn’t think you would, after that!”

Pool Clayton’s face flushed to a deep red, then paled. He had expected to receive the jeers of the outlaws, but it did not please him to have this young fellow begin the thing. Nor did it please him to discover, as he did at once, that Molloy was leader here, in the absence of the chief.

“Where have they gone?” he asked, ignoring Molloy’s words.

“Gone to rake in another prisoner fer you to shoot!” was the brutal answer. One of the outlaws “ha-hahed” at this, his sympathies being against Clayton. “And as the other one is here yit, you’ll have two to shoot, soon’s the boss gits back.”

Clayton did not answer, but slid out of his saddle.

“The boss said that if you did come back you’d got to do what he ordered ye to, er he’d sure shoot you!” Molloy added, with a sneer.

Clayton picketed his horse, and returned to where the outlaws were grouped. At one side lay the prisoner, old Nick Nomad; and Nomad’s horse was with the other horses, grazing by the stream.

“You heard what I said?” snapped Molloy.

“Yes, I heard what you said.”

Clayton felt and looked confused. His cheeks burned hot again, and he knew he was trembling a little. Yet he tried to hide this indication of weakness.

Some of the men greeted him, but coldly and rather surlily. He saw that he had fallen in their estimation. It was a rule of the band that whatever the “boss” ordered had to be done, and no questions asked. Clayton had refused to obey orders, and that made him a marked man.

“If you heard what I said, why don’t you answer?” Molloy demanded.

“I don’t have to,” Clayton flared, shaken by growing anger. “Who are you, anyway?”

Molloy doubled a hairy red fist and stepped in front of him.

“You don’t, hey? I reckon you know I’m commander here now?”

“Yes.” Clayton eyed that hairy and threatening fist.

“Then speak with respect to me. Do you understand that? You’ve got to speak with respect to me, or I’ll hammer your face in ag’in.”

“It wasn’t you did it.”

“You think I can’t, eh?”

Molloy shook his hairy, red fist under Clayton’s nose.

Clayton hesitated, and looked about uneasily. He knew that since his refusal of the night he was looked on as a coward by these men. Molloy was bullying him because of that. Molloy was himself the coward, and Clayton felt it—yet he hesitated, merely pushing the red fist away when it was thrust so close that it touched the tip of his nose.

“Don’t do that!” he protested mildly; so mildly that Molloy was only encouraged to continue his bullying.

“I’m not to, eh?” said Molloy, pushing his fist once more against Clayton’s nose, this time with such strength it was almost a blow.

“I tell you not to do that again!” said Clayton, his tone rising.

“And what will you do? Hey—you coward, what will you do? I’m in command here, ain’t I?”

“I haven’t said you’re not, but I tell you not to do that again.”

Some of the men rose, grinning; this was becoming interesting to them.

“Give it to him, Molloy!” one of them sang out.

Molloy pushed his fist against Clayton’s nose, this time so strongly that it brought blood, for Clayton’s nose was still sensitive and ready to bleed at a touch. The dripping of blood down on his shirt caused Clayton to turn white as a sheet; his eyes glittered with a sort of flash, and he clenched his fists.

“You’re a bully and a coward,” he said, in a low, tense tone. “And if you think I’m afraid of you, or afraid to fight you, you’re mistaken.”

He stepped back, and began slowly to take off his coat. His head was roaring in a queer way, and flecks of red seemed to shoot and dart before his eyes.

The men gathered around, forming a ring, with the youths in the middle.

“Slug him, Molloy!” said the one who had chipped in before.

Molloy could hardly believe his eyes, when he saw that Clayton was coolly preparing to fight him. He sprang at him, but one of the men caught and held him.

“Meet him fair,” he was adjured; “meet him fair!”

“Oh, I’ll meet him fair!” Molloy snarled, really amazed by the discovery that he would have to fight; “and I’ll hammer him to a pulp.”

He shook himself free of the man’s hands, and began to take off his own coat and roll up his sleeves. His arms were big and red, covered with freckles, and unpleasant looking.

Clayton’s arms, as he bared them, were white as a girl’s, above the tan circles of his wrists; but, white as they were, they looked firm and hard and muscular. His face, too pale, did not show fear now, nor cowardice.

“Now I’m ready for you!” he said quietly.

“And here you git it!” howled Molloy, his anger flaming red in his freckled face. “Look out, for I’m coming!”

He leaped and swung, thinking to knock Clayton down at a blow. To his surprise, Clayton side-stepped and dodged, so that the blow, meant for his face, went over his head.

Then—crack! Clayton’s hard white fist fell full on the freckled face of the bully, and Molloy tumbled backward, and would have fallen if one of the outlaws had not caught him.

Molloy was dazed by that blow; but he saw that if he did not now whip Clayton he would lose his standing with these men.

Clayton was standing quite still, his broad chest heaving, his eyes glittering, and his face still pale; he had his hands up, ready for defense.

When Molloy came again, his blow missed, and so did Clayton’s; and then they locked in a fierce grapple, each striving to throw the other.

The men stood about, clapping their hands and urging on the fighting. This was to them as good as a circus.

“Slug him, Molloy!”

“Stand up to him, Pool!”

“Hook him under the jaw!”

“Cave in his face!”

Such were the commands shouted, as the men hopped about in their excitement.

The combatants came to the ground together, Clayton underneath. Molloy had his arms around Clayton, and now tried to push his head against the ground, and at the same time batter him in the face.

In the opinion of the watching men, Pool Clayton was as good as whipped, but with a mighty effort he twisted round, half rising; and then, catching Molloy about the waist and shoulders, he lifted the young bully and threw him through the air.

Molloy fell on his head and shoulders, a crashing fall, and lay still, after sliding out on the ground in a limp heap.

The thing was done so quickly, and was such a surprise, that the men stood in breathless silence, staring. Then one of them came up to Clayton and offered his hand, which Clayton took.

“I didn’t think ye’d do it, Pool,” he confessed. “But you’re a game rooster, after all; and here’s my hand on’t!”

Molloy groaned, writhed about, and then came slowly to a sitting position, dabbing at his face weakly with his hands, and fluttering his eyelids. For a minute he didn’t know what had happened to him. Then he saw the grinning faces about him, and Pool Clayton standing, white-faced and with arms folded, near by.

At sight of that face, evoking recollections of what had happened, Molloy uttered a scream of rage, and drew his revolver. He leveled it quick as a flash and fired, uttering an oath as he did so. Instantly, however, one of the outlaws sprang at him and succeeded in striking his arm, thus turning the weapon aside. He pushed Molloy back violently, and took the revolver from his hands.

“None o’ that!” he cried sternly. “We don’t do that kind o’ work, ye know! If you’re licked, you’re licked; and you’d ought to take it like a man.”

Molloy turned on him, springing to his feet.

“Gimme my revolver!” he commanded.

The man tossed it to one of his friends.

“Not on yer life. I don’t!”

“I’m boss here, ain’t I? Gimme that revolver!”

“And let ye shoot Clayton?”

“That’s none of your bizness! Gimme that revolver!”

The man stood facing him. “See here!” he said. “We reports this biz to Snaky Pete, and Snaky Pete ain’t goin’ to like it. And we don’t take no more orders frum you while he’s gone. Do you git that through yer head, or do I have to hammer it into it with my fist? You’re no longer boss of this outfit. Ben, there, takes yer place; and he’s got yer revolver. Now go off some’eres and think it over.”

Molloy might have protested further, but that a feeling of dizzy faintness came upon him, and he had to drop to a seat on the ground.

Pool Clayton felt bewildered, rather than exultant, and he had forebodings. He did not know how this whole thing would be regarded by Snaky Pete.

He walked out to his horse, after putting his coat on, and changed the picket pin, trying to find something to occupy himself with, while he could think. Finally he came back and sat down by the fire.

Molloy, lying on the grass, panting and dizzy, glared at him malevolently. The men said nothing, though they steadily regarded both him and Molloy.

“A good un fer you!” said a voice.

Nick Nomad had spoken, much to Clayton’s surprise.

“I was bettin’ on ye frum the fust jump. Whenever I hear a feller hollerin’ and pawin’ round, tearin’ up the ground like a mad bull, wantin’ to fight, I allus knows thet thar’s more wind in him than courage; and so I knowed you’d do him up. And I’m congratulatin’ ye on it.”

Molloy lifted himself on his elbow and shot a malignant glance at the old trapper.

“Is it your cut in?” he snapped. “Shut yer head, and keep it shut, or I’ll feed bullets into yer mouth.”

“I’m thet hungry I could eat anything,” said the old trapper, “even bullets.”

The answer brought a laugh from the outlaws, and seemed to lessen the tension.

Pool Clayton had dropped down near the old trapper, but he did not now look at him. But soon he heard the trapper say, and knew that the words were intended for him, even though they might be overheard by the other outlaws:

“My old pard, Buffler Bill, has been sighted in this section of kentry, yer friends has told me, and the boss has gone out ter investigate reports about him; and he says if Buffler is caught, then you’ll have the fun of shootin’ both him and me. I’m cal’lating that there will be things doin’ some when they catches Buffler! He ain’t sich a fool as me.”

CHAPTER VIII. CLOSING IN.

Snaky Pete had in his band some of the finest trailers of the West, some being men who had made their mark as scouts in earlier and better days.

These men had “gone wrong” at last, and were now outlaws; but they had not lost their skill in scouting and trailing; and on them Snaky Pete relied for information concerning Buffalo Bill, if the latter was really in the country.

After leaving camp, Snaky Pete’s scouts and spies broke into two bands, one being under his command, and the other under command of a faithful lieutenant whose cruelties had gained him the name of The White Wolf.

It was now the night of the second day of their investigations, after news had been received from the town confirming the information of Buffalo Bill’s presence and mission. Word had come to Snaky Pete that Buffalo Bill had been sighted.

As strange as anything was the statement that the great border scout was accompanied by a woman of hatchety face and elderly aspect.

The informants brought a description of the place where Buffalo Bill and this female had gone into camp; and, after a discussion with his men, Snaky Pete decided to try to surround the scout there, and capture or kill him.

Horses were left behind, lest by neighing or stamping they should reveal their presence to the man whom the outlaws hoped to take.

At two o’clock in the morning the late moon came up, giving light; and Snaky Pete delayed his attack until that hour, for the camp of the scout was in a dark hollow, and light was needed to make an attack on it successful. By the hour of midnight Snaky Pete and his men were on the mountain slope just below this camp, and they were creeping up the slope when the first faint light in the cast heralded the rising moon.

Buffalo Bill had been duly diligent, yet he knew nothing of this stealthy approach of the road agents who were determined on his destruction. He had fallen asleep in the earlier part of the night, but now he was awake, having been aroused at about one o’clock. At his command Pizen Jane had lain down, dropping into sound slumber.

The scout knew he was in a dangerous country. In addition to the road agents who had captured Nomad, Indians were known by him to be in the neighborhood. All signs pointed to this as a particularly dangerous locality.

The scout sat in the darkness, before the rising of the moon. His feet were over the concealed fire in a hole in the ground, to keep them warm, for the night was cold, and his coat was drawn tightly about him. His rifle was by his side, and in their places were his revolvers and knife.

The night was very dark just before the moon’s appearance, and he observed that it also was remarkably quiet. Though some wolves howled afar off, near at hand not a sound was to be heard.

This was to his mind suggestive, and portended danger. He thought it meant Indians.

Whether they were crawling on him or not, he could not tell, but that Indians were moving about seemed probable, even in the deathly stillness.

His horse, which had been grazing peacefully, became restless. However, after a few snorts it settled down again to nibbling at the scanty grass, though soon it ceased to feed.

The scout rose now, undoubling his tall form and standing erect in the darkness, with rifle in hand and head bent in a listening attitude. He saw the dark shape where the woman lay.

“No use to arouse her,” was his thought; “she needs all the sleep she can get.”

Pizen Jane was still an enigma to him, in spite of the vast amount of talking she had done. The information given of herself had not been much more informing than word puzzles, but she had clung to him, refusing to leave him, while stoutly declaring that her mission there was the same as his—to hunt down outlaws.

When he heard nothing, the scout walked out to his horse. He found it with head up and ears pricked forward, as if it either saw or heard something suspicious.

Standing by his horse, with hand on the lariat close to its nose, the scout looked out into the silent darkness, while his imagination pictured there crawling Indian forms. He did not think of outlaws.

The moon rose, lighting the rim of the hollow where he had pitched camp; but the rim was covered with a thick growth of bushes and small trees, and so concealed from his searching eyes the forms of the desperadoes who had crept up there.

Suddenly they jumped into view, in the red moonlight, yelling as wildly as if they were Indians; and, with revolvers cracking, they sprang down into the hollow, where they expected to find the scout asleep.

With one swift circling motion Buffalo Bill drew his knife and cut the rope that picketed his horse. In another instant he was on its back, and then, with a wild dash, he broke through the thin line of outlaws on that side.

He knew that if he returned to assist Pizen Jane his life would pay for it; and he preferred that she should fall into the hands of these men, leaving him alive, so that he might aid her later; a thing he certainly could not do if he rushed down there and fell under the fire of their revolvers. Yet he had a certain twinge of conscience, which seemed to accuse him of cowardice and an abandonment of Pizen Jane.

“But she can take care of herself, if any person in the world can, and later I can do something for her,” he thought, as he drove his horse pell-mell through the cracking bushes and the whipping branches of the low trees.

The outlaws near him yelled, and took snapshots at him; and soon other shots came ripping through the brush after him.

But he had cleared the cordon which Snaky Pete was certain he had drawn around the camp; and, with a good horse under him, he felt secure, even though that horse had now neither saddle nor bridle.

He waved his hand grimly in the direction of the yelling outlaws, as his horse galloped on into the open, and he saw the gray prairies at the foot of the mountains lying before him in the light of the rising moon.

“Catch me, if you can!” he shouted, almost gay in the thought of the manner in which the outlaws had let him slip through the meshes of their net.

Then he recalled that now both the woman and old Nick Nomad were prisoners in their hands, while he had escaped by the narrowest margin; and, realizing the delicate and dangerous work lying now before him, he mentally girded himself anew for the desperate work thus laid on him.

CHAPTER IX. A DEFIANT PRISONER.

Pizen Jane was aroused from heavy slumber by the yells of the road agents and the crackling fire of their revolvers. She sprang up in bewilderment and momentary terror.

Men almost ran over her, as they dashed in pursuit of the scout. One came up to her, and, catching her roughly by the arm, jerked her round.

Her anger blazed at the insult. Drawing back her fist, she struck him in the face.

“You don’t know me, I reckon?” she cried. “Well, I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar, and I don’t ’low no mis’rable specimen of a man to treat me as if I wasn’t a lady.”

The astounded road agent put a hand to his tingling face. Then, as she seemed about to give him a second blow, he ducked and stepped backward.

“Pardon me,” he said, not without humor; “but I didn’t know I’d run up ag’inst the hind leg of a mule!”

Other desperadoes came rushing up, and they surrounded her, asking questions.

“It’s none o’ yer bizness who I am, er what I’m doin’ here!” she snapped. “But I’m Pizen Jane, of Cinnabar; and what my bizness is you’ll know ’fore you’re ready fer it, lemme tell ye! And if any o’ you cattle thinks he can make fun o’ me, er tries to git gay with me, he’ll mighty quick wish’t he’d gone to some school of good manners.”

“You was with Buffalo Bill?”

“What if I was; an’ what if I wasn’t?”

“That was him that rid off on that hoss?”

“Foller him and ask him, and then mebbe you’ll find out!”

She folded her arms and looked about defiantly, not at all afraid of them, apparently; and she made a queer figure, as she stood there, thus surrounded, with the light of the rising moon revealing her gaunt form and homely features.

The chase of the scout, to judge from the sounds, was of a lively character; there was a continual popping of rifles and revolvers, as the outlaws took snapshots at him, or at shadows which they mistook for him.

“I reckon they ain’t goin’ to git him,” said Pizen Jane complacently, as she cocked an ear in the direction of the uproar.

“Well, we’ve got you!” was the grim answer.

“And a lot o’ good it will do ye! Now that you’ve got me, what ye goin’ to do with me? I ain’t got no money, and I’m too old and homely fer any o’ ye to want me fer a wife.”

She had recovered her mental balance, if it had indeed been lost at all. Now she sat down on the ground very deliberately, and smoothed her tangled hair and her travel-stained dress.

Some of the pursuing road agents began to come in, breathless and spent. They stared hard at her; and she snapped at them with vinegary answers when they asked questions.

One of the men who soon returned from the pursuit was Snaky Pete.

When her eyes lighted on him they burned with a fiercer fire than had been in them lately. She got up and strode toward him, her fingers outstretched as if she meant to tear his face.

“So, it’s you, is it?” she cried. “Well, I might ’a’ knowed it was you, and I did partly guess it! You low-lived, knock-kneed, white-livered, flea-bitten, devil-hunted——” She stopped, gasping, unable to find words to express her detestation and hatred; but went on again: “Oh, you mis’rable scum of the earth! You pestiferous, walkin’ image of a man! I’ve found you, and now I settle with you!”

She stopped, and slowly drew a revolver from the folds of her dress. In another moment she would have shot Snaky Pete dead, if one of his men had not knocked the weapon from her hand.

She struggled with this man, shrieking, and tearing at him, frantically trying to regain her revolver.

When she was held, for others were forced to go to their comrade’s aid, she stood panting and glaring at Snaky Pete, who had not said a word, but stared at her with wide eyes that hardly blinked.

“Jane Clayton!” he gasped. “I thought——”

“You thought I’d be too much of a woman, and too big a coward to——”

“I thought you was dead,” he said; “I was told it, and I——”

“Hoped I was, eh? Well, I ain’t! I’m alive enough to make things warm fer ye, and I’m here to do it. Leggo of me!”

This last was directed to the men who clung to her.

“Leggo of me!” she screeched at them, flinging herself to and fro.

“Search her and see if she’s got other weapons,” said Snaky Pete.

The men had been astounded on hearing her words to him; the whole thing was to them strange and mysterious. They searched her, but not very thoroughly.

“Now, what aire you doin’ here?” Snaky Pete demanded of her. “You was with that man!”

“Yes, with a man callin’ hisself Buffler Bill, though I don’t know if he tole the truth about it. What of it? He was huntin’ outlaws, he said; and so was I. And we j’ined teams, each to help the other. I jedge, by the way you tried to git him, that he’s the ginuine Buffler. And may the Lord speed him in runnin’ away from ye!”

“I s’pose you know that you’ve run yerself into a good deal of danger by yer foolishness?” said Snaky Pete. “If we’ll let you go in the mornin’, and give ye a horse, will you cut out fer the town?”

“Will I? Not till I git through with you!”

“Then we’ll send you under escort; and if you won’t go no other way, we’ll tie you to a horse and make you go.”

“Pete Sanborn,” she said, scorn in her voice, “of all the mean, low-down cowards on this earth, you’re the wust! You’re afeard o’ me, and you’d better be. Oh, I kin tell these gapin’, white-livered wretches with ye that I know you. And why shouldn’t I, sense I was yer wife fer more’n two years, and had a chance to know how beastly mean a man kin be when he gits down and tries? I come huntin’ ye, fer one thing; and I’ve found ye.”

Snaky Pete seemed afraid of her.

“Shut up!” he said; but she cackled defiantly.

“I won’t! I’m goin’ to tell these men what a coward ye aire. You remember that time you knocked the drunk man down in the street, and then drug him into an alley and robbed him? And do ye recklect that other time, when you stole the gold altar service from a church, and melted it down and sold it? And do you recall that other time, when——”

“Close your head!” he shouted. He sprang at her, wild-eyed and fiendish; but she clawed him in the face, and he fell back.

“Take her away!” he commanded. “Kill her—do anything! Take her away!”

The men dragged her away, while she screamed and raved her hatred of the man who had once been her husband.

Snaky Pete tried to turn the incident aside as a jest.

“Heavens!” he said, “that woman’s got a tongue worse than a whip! She’ll kill me. I did marry her, but that tongue made me mighty sick of my bargain, and I left her. She’s sore over that, and she——”

He stopped as if disturbed by the angry outcries of Pizen Jane, but it was really because he realized that he might talk too much himself.

CHAPTER X. MOTHER AND SON.

Buffalo Bill was not captured by Snaky Pete’s road agents.

The escape of the dreaded scout annoyed them. They feared him, and knowledge that he was in that region disconcerted and troubled them greatly.

They returned to the pursuit after daylight, but had no better success, and at length gave over the attempt to capture the elusive scout.

When Snaky Pete and his band, with their woman prisoner, reached the camp at Poplar Bluffs, Tom Molloy and Pool Clayton, with their strife and bickering, had disrupted the band left there, and were on the point of settling the trouble by a free-for-all fight.

“You’ll be int’rested in some one there,” Snaky Pete had said to Pizen Jane.

That she was interested was proved by the outcry she made as her eyes fell on Pool Clayton.

“So you’re here, Bruce, jes’ as I expected to find ye?” she sputtered. “Right here with these pizen skunks, after you writ to me that you had fell into the hands of a fake Buffler Bill, who was a road agent, and that he was holdin’ you a pris’ner, and was likely to murder ye! What did you mean by writin’ that pack o’ lies to yer own mother?”

Pool Clayton’s face grew as red as a beet. He looked at Snaky Pete and the road agents, and then back at the woman who had so suddenly announced that he was her son.

On the ground lay the prisoner, Nick Nomad, who had a twinkle in his eyes now.

“What did ye mean?” she screamed at Pool Clayton. “Here I find this pizen scamp that used to call hisself my husband, and with him I find you! Both o’ ye road agents—the man that was my husband and the boy that was my son!”

Pizen Jane’s voice broke in a sort of pitiful wail, and Nomad saw the tears come into her eyes.

Pool Clayton looked confused and sheepish; Snaky Pete looked angry and humiliated.

“Here, shut up yer yawp!” Snaky Pete shouted to her. “You’re a nuisance; do ye know it?”

“A nuisance is a good sight more of a credit to ther community than a murderous wretch like you!” she retorted. “Shut up yer own yawp! The Lord gimme my tongue, and I’ve a right to use it, and I’m goin’ to.”

She turned again to Pool Clayton.

“I’m ashamed of ye!” she said. “Why did you write me sich a pack o’ lies?”

“Just to make you think I—I was killed, or would be,” he admitted.

“You didn’t want me to know that you had turned road agent. You didn’t want me to know that you’d j’ined forces with that measly runt there that I heard one of these men call Snaky Pete. Well, he is snaky, and he’s worse’n snaky.”

Then her voice and manner changed.

“Pool,” she said, with something of motherly tenderness in her voice, “it hurt me to believe that you’d gone wrong; and to find you here hurts me more than that did. Git out of it, son; leave this crowd of villains, and try to be an honest man. I’m a pore old woman, but I’ll work my finger nails off to git ye a start in some honest way, if you’ll jes’ make a try to be honest.”

“Take her away,” commanded Snaky Pete, irritated and wrathful.

She suffered herself to be led away, broken in spirit now, and sobbing. For the moment, at least, she was no longer Pizen Jane, but a heartbroken old woman.

The stir caused by the return of the main body of desperadoes caused the feud between Pool Clayton and Tom Molloy to be forgotten, or overlooked, for a time.

The astonishing claim of Pizen Jane, that Pool Clayton was her son and that Snaky Pete was her recreant husband, was enough of itself to make the outlaws forget that Clayton and Molloy had fought, and were threatening bloody things against each other.

Snaky Pete walked nervously about, giving orders in a tone of irritation which masked somewhat the real feelings of his heart. He observed the prisoner, old Nick Nomad, then he looked at Pool Clayton, who had withdrawn to a distance, both from his mother and from Snaky Pete, his stepfather.

Molloy had slunk away, and was busily engaged in making himself inconspicuous.

Snaky Pete grew wrathful and murderously vindictive.

“Here!” he snarled, speaking to Pool Clayton. “You ain’t done yit what I told ye to!” He swung his hand toward Nick Nomad, as he thus spoke to the young would-be outlaw. “I told you to shoot that old skunk, and git him out of the way, and you ain’t done it!”

Pool Clayton came forward when Snaky Pete shouted to him a second time.

“You needn’t think that you and yer mother kin come here and run this camp! If she makes trouble, I’ll lay a stingin’ quirt across her back, and you’ve got to mind me, er I’ll put a bullet through your head instanter, and git rid of ye!”

Pool Clayton stood before him, trembling.

“Do ye hear?”

“Yes,” said Clayton.

“Then finish up the job that you wouldn’t do when I first tole ye to; put a bullet through that ole fool instanter. He’s a pard of Buffalo Bill, and out he goes. We can’t keep him, and we can’t afford to let him go.”

Old Nick Nomad never changed countenance as he heard these brutal orders.

“Buffler,” he had said once, talking with his old border pard, “I allus tries ter live, so that when ther eend comes I can face it square and honest. My hand has been ag’inst wrong, and I has tried to keep it frum doin’ wrong.”

In that confident assurance old Nick Nomad lived, and in it he could now die, if he had to.

Yet the warm currents of life ran through his veins still, almost as freely as when he was a youth, and he did not desire death. He desired to live, that he might further strike at the wrongdoers of the border; and even as he listened to Snaky Pete he was wondering how he could escape the doom which those words seemingly foreshadowed.

Another heard Snaky Pete’s brutal and murderous commands. The other was Pizen Jane. She stepped courageously in front of the old trapper, brushing away the hands of the outlaws who would have restrained her.

“Aire you a friend of Buffler Bill—the ginuine Buffler Bill?” she demanded.

“Lady,” said Nomad, “I is happy ter say thet I’m one of thet man’s closest friends. I’ll never deny thet, even afore ther Judgment.”

She faced around toward Snaky Pete.

“Pete Sanborn,” she said, her words sharp as knives, “when you kill this man you shoot me down, too; and as fur as lettin’ any son of mine do a thing like that, I’ll slay him with my own hands fust!”

Snaky Pete’s eyes glittered and his face almost grew black with rage.

“Git out of my way!” he yelled, drawing a long knife. He lifted it, and jumped with it at the fearless woman.

A rifle cracked, seeming far off on the slope of the near-by mountain. Snaky Pete stopped in mid-air, and, throwing up his hands, he fell to the earth, blood spurting from between his lips.

The men of the camp stood still, shocked and confused; then a yell of wrath broke forth. Some of them threw themselves on their horses, while others rushed to Snaky Pete, lifting him.

“Glory be!” screamed Pizen Jane, waving her gaunt arms. “If the devil is dead, I know who killed him! ’Twas Buffler Bill!”

CHAPTER XI. THE DESERT HOTSPUR.

Buffalo Bill had not only evaded and baffled the outlaws, but had circled around them, struck their trail, and had followed it so closely that, from the mountain side, he had been able to look down into the camp and behold the scenes which have been described.

He had strong field glasses, that drew the actors close to him, apparently. He saw them so clearly that he almost fancied he could follow the conversation. His long-range rifle lay at his side. He saw that Nomad was there as a prisoner, and certain actions told him that Nomad was in peril. He also fancied that Pizen Jane’s life was being threatened.

As he looked, lowering his field glasses occasionally, he fitted to his rifle telescopic sights, taking them from a pocket of his coat.

On all the border there was not another rifle shot like Buffalo Bill. He was famous as a long-range sharpshooter.

Instead of looking longer through the field glasses, he looked now through the telescopic sights of his rifle. He saw Snaky Pete standing before the woman, who was protecting Nick Nomad with her body. He saw the knife raised and glittering in Snaky Pete’s hand. Then his rifle cracked, with the sights bearing on the outlaw leader; and the bullet speeding true, he saw Snaky Pete pitch up his hands and roll to the ground.

“Good work!” he said, patting the rifle affectionately. “That was about as long a shot as I ever made; but I got him.”

He saw men spring for their horses, and knew they would ride out to the point where the rifle had sounded; yet he lingered long enough to see Snaky Pete lifted and carried aside.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said. “The distance was too great, and I didn’t strike a vital spot; but he’ll remember it for some time, I’ve no doubt, and maybe it will teach him better manners.”

He removed the telescopic sight and stowed it away and placed the field glasses in their case.

Taking up his rifle, he made his way down the hill, keeping out of view of the horsemen who were now riding hard in his direction.

Some distance below, in a growth of aspens, his horse had been concealed. Mounting, he rode down the slope. Then, swinging round the projecting base of the hill, he shaped his course across the open country. His horse was speedy, and it was seemingly untiring.

Though the outlaws saw him soon, and gave hot chase, he steadily drew away from them, and in an hour he had lost sight even of the foremost.

That night, as darkness fell, the great scout was before the gate at Fort Thompson, where a company of cavalry was stationed. He was challenged; then he was admitted and conducted to the headquarters of Major Clendenning, the commander.

Cody’s horse was in a white lather of sweat from its long run; and the scout’s clothing was powdered with white dust, and dust streaked his face to a grayish tinge. He showed every indication of long and hard riding.

Clendenning sprang up, with outstretched hand, when the noted scout was brought before him.

Buffalo Bill had saluted, but he now took the extended hand of the officer.

“In the name of Heaven, Cody, where have you come from?” cried the major. “I thought you were over about the Sepulcher Mountains.”

“So I was, major,” was his answer, “but now I am here. I rode from there since this morning.”

Major Clendenning’s amazement showed in his face.

“You had a change of horses, no doubt, and you must be nearly dead! Let me get you some wine!”

“I had only one horse. He is pretty well exhausted, but will be all right after a rest. I need another, which I hope you can let me have.”

“Swallow the wine, Cody, and then I’ll hear your story. Straight from the Sepulcher Mountains since morning!”

Buffalo Bill drank the wine, and then began to tell his story.

“Nomad is a prisoner,” was one of his statements, “and so is a woman from Cinnabar who calls herself Pizen Jane. I’m not just certain of her, but she bravely stood up before Nomad when that outlaw threatened him.”

“She and Nomad will both be slain, if they have not been already,” said Clendenning.

“It may be. I’m hoping otherwise. But I saw I could do no more then than I had done, and that if I expected to aid them I must have assistance. So I rode here to get it.”

“You shall have it, Cody.”

“I want twenty good men, well armed and provisioned. We’ll not be able to get back there as quickly as I came from there; but we can go as fast as possible. I shall rescue Nomad and root out that devil’s nest. If he has been killed, there will be some desperadoes of the Sepulcher Mountains who will pay for it with their lives.”

“You can start as early in the morning, Cody, as you like, and you shall have the men,” said Clendenning; “I’ll give the orders right now.”

He turned to the door.

“Stop, major; I want those men right now, without a moment’s delay.”

Clendenning turned back in surprise.

“But you’ll have to rest, Cody; you can’t go back without proper rest.”

“I’m fit to start back this minute, Major Clendenning. It will be a favor if you detail the men who are to go with me, and have them get ready instantly. I should like to have you order an extra horse for me, and while preparations are being made I’ll eat a bite, and then go right back.”

Clendenning, amazed at the scout’s orders, proceeded, however, to carry them out.

Twenty picked men were soon saddling horses, looking to their rifles, packing rations, and getting ready for a hard and swift ride to the Sepulcher Mountains.

Buffalo Bill swallowed some food hastily, ordered his saddle pouches to be filled with more; and then dropped down on a lounge in the major’s headquarters for a few winks of sleep. He had hardly stretched himself on the lounge before he was sleeping soundly.

He slept less than half an hour, during which time the preparations for his departure were being hurried; then he awoke, seemingly much refreshed and ready for any task.

It was this astonishing ability to fall asleep anywhere and at any time, and to awake after a brief slumber apparently as refreshed as if he had slept through a whole night, that in part made Buffalo Bill the wonder he was on a border trail.

He now brushed his clothing, ate more food, and then issued from the major’s headquarters.

“Men,” he said, speaking to the troopers who greeted him, and who were about ready to follow him, “we’ll have a hard night’s work of it, and a part of to-morrow may be consumed if the outlaws have changed their location; but I know you, each of you—men of the gallant old Seventh Cavalry!—and I thank you in advance for the success I know you will achieve. If Nick Nomad has been killed by Snaky Pete’s desperadoes, then desperado blood will flow before we see this fort again.”

They cheered him to the echo. Not a man there but felt proud to follow this gallant scout, whose reputation was so closely linked with that of the famous Seventh Cavalry.

Members of that noted regiment had died with Custer on the battlefield of the Little Bighorn, when a handful of men were overwhelmed and swept out of existence by a horde of Indian braves, the flower of the Sioux nation. On almost every battlefield of the West in which Uncle Sam’s troopers were hurled against Indians or outlaws, the gallant Seventh had had representatives.

The troopers cheered again, saluting the flag, as they passed in the night out through the heavy double gates of the fort.

Major Clendenning accompanied them beyond the limits of the fort and its grounds.

“Men,” he said, as he was about to turn back, “I have a new name for our famous scout. Hotspur usually refers to a man impetuous of temper; but it might mean, also, I think, a man who as a horseman rode with a spur so hot that in nine hours he covered the distance between the Sepulcher Mountains and Fort Thompson. So I give you a new name for him—Buffalo Bill, the Desert Hotspur.”

He lifted his hat to the scout; and again the troopers cheered, their loud cheering rolling across the level lands in a way that, if it could have been heard by them, would have startled the desperadoes under Snaky Pete.

Then the troopers, with Buffalo Bill riding swiftly at their head, to set the pace for them, galloped away through the night and the darkness, the thundering of the hoofs of the horses reaching into the barracks at the fort.

CHAPTER XII. IN THE OUTLAW STRONGHOLD.

Snaky Pete’s men, when they returned, reported that no horse they had could keep in sight of the thoroughbred ridden by Buffalo Bill.

The outlaw chief received the report, lying on a roll of blankets, gasping and sputtering. The bullet fired by the scout had struck him on the lower lip, laying it open, knocking out some teeth, and bringing a spurt of blood from the wound. Snaky Pete had thought he was killed when he fell and knew that blood was pouring from his mouth. As a matter of fact, he was not seriously wounded, though the pain was sharp for a time, and the character of the wound made it difficult for him to speak.

His fright did not soon pass, however. Even after his men returned with their report that Buffalo Bill had escaped he still lay on the blankets, moaning and cursing.

The fact that Buffalo Bill had ridden toward distant Fort Thompson filled him with uneasiness. Because of it he ordered the horses to be got ready, and the entire band to move at once into the Sepulcher Mountains.

He was filled with a sullen and savage rage against Pizen Jane and Pool Clayton, and against Nick Nomad. He began to believe that Pizen Jane had guided Nomad and Buffalo Bill; and he now even suspected that Pool Clayton, in joining the band, was moved by a desire to betray it into the hands of officers.

He refused to furnish Pizen Jane with a horse, declaring that if she accompanied him she would have to walk.

She came up to him, as he swayed weakly on the horse to which he had been helped.

“Git out o’ my way,” he mumbled. “If you hang ’round me I’ll kill ye!”

“But I want to know if you ain’t goin’ to send Pool away? I ain’t goin’ away myself, but I want Pool turned loose on a horse, with orders fer him to go back to Cinnabar. I’ve been talkin’ with him, and he’ll do it. Aire ye goin’ to let him?”

“I’ll furnish you with a horse to clear out on,” he said, speaking with pain and difficulty.

“Me? La, I ain’t goin’! But I want him to start now, instanter. Here he’s like a good apple in the middle of a lot of rotten ones. So I——”

“Go yourself!” Snaky Pete snarled at her.

“No, I stay with you!”

“Why?”

“Well, jest to please myself.”

“To help that old trapper?”

“No; jes’ to please myself. I’m yer wife, ain’t I? Er I was, before I divorced ye. I think I’ll stay with you.”

“I’ll kill you if you do!” he fumed. “He can’t go! Go yerself, and I’ll be glad to have you git out.”

She dropped back, to where Pool Clayton was riding.

He slipped from his horse.

“Take it, and I’ll walk,” he said, with a guilty flush.

“I want you to leave these men instanter,” she urged.

“No; I ain’t goin’ to. Why don’t you go?”

“Me?” She leaned toward him. “Because I’ve swore by everything that’s good and bad that I’m goin’ to kill Pete Sanborn soon’s I git the chance. He ruined my life, and now he’s ruinin’ yourn.”

Her voice was low, but her face flushed as if she had swallowed fiery liquor.

Snaky Pete saw her talking with the youth, and then saw her mount the horse which Pool surrendered to her.

“They’re ag’inst me!” he grumbled, under his breath. “They’ve planned to break up the band and git me captured. It’s revenge she’s after. Well, I’ll settle her; and I’ll settle him, and that old trapper, too! I see now why Pool wouldn’t shoot the old cuss; it was ’cause he’s in with him. He and she aire in with Buffalo Bill and the officers. Likely they’re to git a reward, if they land me. Well, I’ll settle ’em!”

He brooded over this, his anger mounting and his desire to “settle ’em” growing.

“Mebbe I can git out of her what the plans of Buffalo Bill aire; er mebbe I can git it out of Pool. I reckon that Cody will try to bring soldiers from Fort Thompson. There’s a nasty fight comin’, I can see. Well, I’m livin’ yit; and long’s I can straddle a horse and give orders, I’m worth a dozen men in a fight. And if Cody thinks we won’t fight he’ll know better when he tackles us.”

His thoughts took another turn:

“P’r’aps I might buy Cody to draw off the soldiers by sending him word that if he didn’t I’d kill Nomad. It might work, and might be advisable if we git in a tight hole.”

He was in a fretting and fuming mood when the Sepulcher Mountains were entered. His wound made him feverish, and that did not add to his good temper. He snapped and snarled at his men whenever they came to him for orders, and conducted himself altogether in a disagreeable way.

“He’s jes’ like a bear with a sore head,” said Pizen Jane, when she observed these things.

She had kept with the outlaw command, and Pool Clayton had done the same; both of them avoiding, as much as possible, personal contact with the irascible leader.

As soon as their permanent camp was gained, in the Sepulcher Mountains, the outlaws began to put it in order for a fight or a siege.

The place was a cuplike hollow, with a pass running through it. If an enemy could gain and hold both ends of that pass the outlaws could only escape by scaling the mountains. But, on the other hand, if the outlaws barricaded those entrances into the valley and stationed a force of riflemen behind the barricades, the troopers who climbed over them would have the fight of their lives to accomplish it.

Tn spite of the pain of his wound and his feverishness, Snaky Pete personally superintended the strengthening of the barricades. He saw that ammunition was properly distributed, and that all arms were put in the best possible condition.

Night was approaching before all the defenses were in condition to suit him. He looked them over carefully, as he walked from point to point, his face swathed in bandages.

“If they climb over them,” he thought grimly, “there’ll be more dead troopers than live ones. When Snaky Pete gits his back to the wall, he fights, and they’ll find it out.”

CHAPTER XIII. PEERLESS AS A SCOUT.

Buffalo Bill and the troopers from Fort Thompson struck the foothills of the Sepulcher Mountains at daybreak, and were thus able to get under cover of the scrub that fringed them, and out of sight of any spies and scouts that Snaky Pete might have sent out.

It had been a hard night’s ride to accomplish this, but it was worth the exertion.

Buffalo Bill was sure that the road agents had changed their position since he saw them last. Hence, the first thing to do was to locate them in their new position.

In spite of the tremendous strain he had been under for so long, he undertook to do this himself; and he left the troopers in camp in a grassy nest within the foothills, but close up to the base of the Sepulcher range.

He rode his weary horse for a few miles, until he struck the trail made by the outlaws in their retreat. Then he left the horse well concealed, and began on foot to follow the trail. It was so fresh looking he thought the outlaws were not far ahead. However, he went so slowly in order to guard against surprise, that the afternoon was well advanced before he came in sight of the cuplike hollow where they were preparing to make their stand.

From an elevation that commanded the hollow he looked with his field glasses right down into the camp, and saw the busy preparations making to meet the troopers.

He was much worried, because he could not see old Nick Nomad. He hoped, however, that the old man was being held in one of the houses.

Once he beheld Pizen Jane, but only for a brief moment or two. She came out of a low hut, and looked about, and then went in again.

“I must know, if possible, if Nomad is there; and I wish I could do something to protect that woman when we make our charge.”

His study of the outlaw stronghold convinced him that it would be folly to attack it from either end of the pass. The barricades were strong, he saw, and he did not wish to sacrifice the lives of any of the troopers needlessly. So he began to examine the slopes of the hills that led down into that hollow.

They were unscalable to horses, but he believed at one point men might descend them, even in the darkness. He made careful note of that point, and stowed its landmarks in his memory.

When the shadows of coming night filled the hollow, the scout moved from his position, and began to work his way down toward it, screening himself behind rocks and bushes.

Darkness came fully while he was still on the slope of the hill, and he remained there until he felt it was safe to work still nearer in to the outlaw camp.

Guards had been set at the barricades, and beyond them in the passes, and guards were also stationed around the camp at intervals.

The scout approached so near to one of these guards that he heard the tread of the fellow’s feet and caught the odor of the tobacco burning in his pipe.

Though he desired to get still nearer in, Buffalo Bill saw the difficulty of the attempt, for this sentry walked a beat which crossed the line of his advance.

After working with much care to one side, he crouched in the darkness and emitted there the well-known “cuckoo” call of the prairie-dog owl, hoping by it to reach old Nomad, if the trapper still lived.

The guard was not disturbed at first by the call of the little owl, for it was a familiar sound; but when it was several times repeated, and with a variation he had never heard in the note, his attention was attracted.

“A cussed funny dog owl,” the scout heard him mutter; and then heard him come toward him.

Buffalo Bill desired to keep from the outlaws the fact that their camp was being spied on, hence he crouched low in the hollow and waited until the guard had turned back. Then he sent forth again the “cuckoo” call, with that queer variation which had attracted the notice of the sentinel.

Unfortunately for the immediate success of the scout’s efforts, Nomad was at the time asleep in one of the huts, and so did not hear him.

When no answer came to his calls, the scout’s uneasiness concerning the fate of Nomad grew.

Resolved to know, if possible, if the old trapper lived, he slipped from his place of concealment when the sentry had walked to the farther end of his beat, and then went sliding farther down over the steep rocks.

The sentry was a keen-eared fellow, and heard the displacement of a small stone, which rattled down the slope. Instantly the scout flattened himself on the rocks and waited until the stone fell.

After a moment of silence, the sentry again came toward him; and soon the scout could see him faintly in the dim light of the stars.

“Prairie-dog owls don’t ginerally go to rollin’ stones,” the sentinel was muttering, as he stood staring up the slope, trying to make out what it was had started the stone to rolling.

He could see nothing that warranted suspicion.

“Mebbe a coyote tryin’ to git at the owl,” he said to himself; “ain’t heerd the owl fer a minute er so. P’r’aps it was scared off by a coyote.”

As he came still farther up the slope, prying and peering, he saw something, and, pitching up his rifle, he fired at it. What he beheld was the recumbent form of the scout flattened against the rock.

The scout saw the rifle pointed toward him, and avoided its bullet by a quick, sliding movement. The lead struck the rock over his head.

That sliding motion was heard and seen by the sentry. He did not believe, then, that what he had shot at was a man, but thought it a coyote; and, because it had not bounded away, he thought he had slain it. He leaped forward, swinging his rifle; while a roar of excited calls and questions were hurled up at him from the camp.

He beheld the dark ball into which the scout had doubled himself when he knew he could not easily escape, and plunged toward it, with knife in hand.

To his astonishment, as he bent down he was caught by the collar of his coat and jerked flat on his face. He yelled in fright; then wheezed, as the iron fingers of the scout settled around his windpipe.

The men below were yelling up at him.

Buffalo Bill’s choking fingers reduced him to unconsciousness, and then flung him aside. The scout still lay where he had been lying; but now his revolvers were out.

“That aroused the whole camp,” he said to himself, “and I’ll have to get out of here quick.”

It occurred to him that in arousing the outlaws he had probably aroused the old trapper, also, if he lived; so he sent forth again, with that varying quaver, the call of the little dog owl.

Old Nomad, who had been awakened by the rifle shot and the clamor, heard it, and recognized it at once. He sat bolt upright, listening for its repetition.

It came again, clear and unmistakable.

“Buffler!” he said, with a thrill of recognition. Then he rolled to the door of the hut, for he was bound; and from the open doorway sounded a cry similar to that which had come from the hillside.

When Buffalo Bill heard it, a great load of dread rolled from his heart.

“Nomad!” he said. “Thank Heaven he is alive!”

Pizen Jane had been standing close by the door, on the outside, when Nick Nomad uttered that cry of the dog owl.

“That’s queer,” she said, looking at him, seeing him faintly outlined. “Have you got a dog owl hid about ye?”

“A hull cageful,” he answered. And again he sent out the cry.

Buffalo Bill was already climbing up the slope, knowing that the outlaws would soon be there. He was glad he had aroused old Nomad, but he regretted that he had drawn the rifle fire of the sentry; for he had hoped the outlaws would not guess that an enemy had gained access to that slope of the hill overhanging their permanent camp.

But regrets were useless. The only thing to be done was to accommodate himself to the fact.

When the outlaws, climbing up the hill, gained the point where the sentry lay senseless, they found him, and flashed lights to discover if he were dead or what had happened to him. By shaking the man, they aroused him; and he sat up, staring and wheezing, clutching at his aching throat.

“I thought it was a coyote,” he gurgled.

“And what was it?”

“Well, I dunno; but somethin’ grabbed me and choked me, and——”

“Must have been a man!”

“I thought it—it was a coyote, prowlin’ round after a dog owl,” he explained. “I heard the dog owl, and then I thought I saw the coyote, and——”

“Shot at a coyote? That was no way to do!”

“Well, I didn’t know but ’twas mebbe a man.”

They took him down into the camp, where Snaky Pete was nervously awaiting their report. Snaky Pete questioned him, and inspected his throat.

“Finger prints there, it looks like,” he said. “’Twas a man. And if a man, then ’twas an enemy, er he wouldn’t slid out that way. Mebbe there aire more of ’em up there. Strengthen the guards, and every man stand to his post.”

Old Nick Nomad, lying in the doorway of the hut, was listening for some other sound from Buffalo Bill.

“What was the meanin’ of that?” Pizen Jane asked him, after the helpless sentry had been brought in.

Nomad was silent, and she repeated her question.

“I might say, if I thought I could trust ye.”

“I’ll prove to ye that you can,” she said; “though I’m doin’ jes’ what I have been meanin’ to do all day.” She bent over him and cut the cords that held him, and then slipped the knife into his hands. “Now, what was it?”

“Buffler Bill,” said Nomad. “He was out thar. Thet war his signal ter me; and I answered it.”

“He’s got men with him?” she gasped.

“I dunno. Mebbe he has, and mebbe he ain’t. But he’s silent now, and prob’bly has cut out, seein’ that the force hyar is too big fer him. But you bet he’ll be comin’ back ag’in; and when he does, somethin’ will be doin’.”

CHAPTER XIV. THE LIVING BARRICADE.

In one way, it was unfortunate that Pizen Jane had released old Nomad at that time. A road agent who had heard the cry of the dog owl from the hut, and wondered about it, came over to investigate, and appeared so suddenly and inopportunely that he discovered what Pizen Jane had done. With a yell of astonishment and wrath, he hurled the woman aside and leaped on the old trapper.

Under ordinary conditions, Nomad might have engaged this desperado successfully; but now his arms and legs were benumbed, and his whole body was sore and stiff, from the long congestion of blood caused by the bonds that had been on him.

Nevertheless, though surprised, and taken at such a disadvantage, the old trapper put up a stiff fight. He slashed a wide gash in the outlaw’s face with the knife Pizen Jane had given him; and then, tripping the outlaw, he rolled with him over and over on the floor, clawing and striking with all his might.

Pizen Jane flew to the aid of Nomad, and set upon the road agent.

How the singular combat would have ended, if there had been no interference, cannot be stated.

There was interference. Other outlaws, drawn by the noise, ran to the hut; and in a very little while both old Nomad and Pizen Jane were overpowered and their weapons taken from them.

Snaky Pete came to the hut, drawn by the yells of his men, and learned what had happened. His rage passed all bounds. He drew a revolver, and for an instant it seemed that he meant to shoot both old Nomad and Pizen Jane. Then another thought came to him.

“Tie ’em, and keep ’em tied,” he said; “and send Pool Clayton here. I want to see him bad.”

That sounded ominous.

Pool Clayton was called, and came forward with fear and trembling. He had told his mother not long before that he was willing to leave the outlaws, and glad to do it, if she would accompany him. He had been expecting that she would do that soon. It was delayed, he thought, by the difficulty of getting out of the camp.

The young man had been given a good deal of time for serious reflection. His dreams of what a road agent’s life was like had not come true; and, besides, he had been aroused to a realization of the enormity of the offense itself. In addition, his heart had been touched by his mother.

But perhaps the strongest of the forces that had moved him was a recollection of Snaky Pete’s commands to him to shoot old Nomad. That, with his present fear of personal danger in the battle with the troopers that seemed imminent, had made him want to get out of the camp without delay.

It seemed to him that his talks with his mother, and even his thoughts and desires to get away, had become known to Snaky Pete, when the latter sent for him, commanding him sharply to appear at once.

On arriving at the hut, he saw Nomad and Pizen Jane bound and prisoners. A startling fear that he was to be commanded to shoot not only Nomad but his mother came to terrify him.

“Tie him!” Snaky Pete roared.

The road agents threw themselves upon the fear-stricken youth, quickly subdued him, and bound him. Then Snaky Pete took occasion to explain to his men just what he meant to do.

“Buffalo Bill thinks mighty well, seems to me, of them three people,” he said, pointing to the three prisoners. “It’s my opinion that Pool and his mother got in here on purpose to betray the band, and lead enemies to it. In my jedgment, they’d have done something to-night, by way of weakenin’ the barricades, mebbe, that would have got us all killed er captured.”

The murmurs of the desperadoes rose unpleasantly as they listened to these accusations.

“I been watchin’ Pool ever sence he refused to shoot that old duffer there when I ordered him to. That’s one p’int in the proof that he is ole Nomad’s friend and Cody’s friend; and that woman I know to be the pizenest rattlesnake in many ways that ever crawled on the earth.

“Jes’ the same, I ain’t goin’ to shoot ’em—not now! I want ’em put up in front of the barricades, where the troopers can see ’em; and then, if the soldiers want to shoot into the barricades, let ’em do it.”

It was a long speech, and its utterance cost him effort and pain; yet he felt savagely gratified by it. He had determined on the death of Pizen Jane, and of Pool Clayton and Nick Nomad.

If the troopers, in trying to take the barricades, killed the three, well and good; for a time he hoped their position there would hold the soldiers back. If the prisoners were not thus slain, he would have them shot as enemies after the coming fight was over. He still had confidence in his men and in the strength of his position, and was feverishly vengeful and defiant.

Pool Clayton wilted and cried out for mercy when he was dragged by the road agents out to one of the barricades, and was lifted over it and tied to the logs of which it was composed. His mother was tied by his side. They were on the outside of the barricade, and looked up the dark pass, where they half expected to see soon the flaming of the carbines of troopers.

Placed thus, where the rain of lead could not miss them, it seemed to Pool Clayton that his end was at hand. He cried out in bitterness and anguish of spirit, reproaching himself for the evil course which had led to this horrible fate.

“Pool,” said Pizen Jane, touched by his moaning outcries, “there aire things that aire a heap worse’n to die this way; and one of the things that aire worse is bein’ a successful road agent. Fer that is a thing that would shore destroy you, body and soul.”

“Oh, don’t talk that way!” he wailed. “Don’t talk that way! We must escape! We must get away!”

He threw himself to and fro in his agonies.

One of the outlaws came climbing over the barricade.

“See here,” he said, “if you don’t stop that yelpin’, I’ve got orders to gag ye. Now, will you stop?”

Pool Clayton stopped, but lay shivering against the logs, white-faced and wild-eyed, overcome by terror.

At the other barricade Nick Nomad had been tied in the same way.

But Nomad was showing no cowardly spirit. He believed in Buffalo Bill’s ability to accomplish even wonders, and he therefore had hope.

CHAPTER XV. THE GALLANT TROOPERS.

Buffalo Bill scaled successfully the slope of the mountain above the outlaw camp and got away.

He heard the uproar in the camp, and was almost tempted to turn back, fearing for the life of Nick Nomad; but he went on. He did not really see how he could help Nomad without at the same time putting his own life in such jeopardy that the risk could not be justified.

Two hours later he reached his horse, which he mounted, and then shaped his course by the stars in the direction of the camp of troopers.

Midnight was long past when he reached their camp and reported his discoveries.

“I must have half an hour’s sleep,” he said, “and while I am getting it have everything made ready for an immediate advance.”

He dropped down by one of the fires, in his clothing, and was sleeping almost at once, as soundly as a child.

The lieutenant in command of the troopers awoke him at the end of his brief nap. Then, once more, the redoubtable scout was in the saddle, this time leading the troopers forth toward the discovered camp of the desperadoes of the Sepulcher Mountains.

The men under Buffalo Bill gained the base of the mountain over against the outlaw camp shortly before daylight, having ridden hard to accomplish it.

There the horses were left, one man out of four dropping back to hold them, while the other three went forward. Buffalo Bill again led the advance, up the slopes of the mountain.

His spying of the previous afternoon had convinced him of the folly of trying to take those barricades by assault. He did not doubt the courage and ability of the troopers, than whom braver men never lived, but it would have been criminal, he felt, to ask them to lay down their lives in front of those deadly barricades when the camp might be taken in an easier way. His plan was to climb the mountain, and descend in the darkness just before the dawn upon the outlaw camp, endeavoring by this descent and the suddenness of the attack to surprise and stampede its defenders.

In spite of his strenuous efforts to get down the slope while the darkness was densest, the very fact that the darkness was so great kept the scout from doing this. For the descent had to be made with caution; and, consequently, was made with wearying slowness.

The gray dawn was in the east when the troopers crouched like mountain lions on the rocky ground that overhung the outlaw camp.

Down in the camp there was some kind of stir, though what it meant could not be determined. In the gray light the shapes of the low huts were almost indistinguishable. The sentries that the scout knew were there could not be seen, for not a light flickered, and no camp-fire glow was seen. Nevertheless, he was sure that behind the barricades the outlaws were waiting and watching, and that alert sentinels were making their ceaseless and vigilant rounds.

Suddenly a single revolver shot sounded down in the camp, breaking with startling clearness on the still air of the dawn. Following it there was an excited clamor.

Buffalo Bill did not know what that shot meant. He realized that it might be a signal that he and the troopers had been discovered. Yet he did not hesitate, but gave instantly the command to charge, hoping to gain some advantage by the excitement and confusion into which the outlaws seemed to have been thrown.

The troopers leaped, some sliding and rolling, down the bowldered slope. Then their charging cheer rose, and their carbines flamed and cracked as they gained the lower ground, and rushed upon the huts they now beheld before them.

Most of the outlaws were at the moment behind the barricades which defended the two sides of the camp, at the entrances of the pass. Some of them, however, were in or near one of the huts, and, with wild yells, they tried to meet the onset of the charging troopers.

At the head of the troopers was seen the tall form of Buffalo Bill, as, with revolver in hand, he led the charge.

Desperadoes went down under the fire of the troopers, and troopers fell, shot by desperadoes; and then the troopers were in the midst of the huts, and the battle was on in all its fury.

CHAPTER XVI. A WOMAN’S VENGEANCE.

The shot which Buffalo Bill and the troopers heard, and which was followed by their advance, was fired by Pizen Jane.

Perhaps because she was a woman the cords that bound her wrists and held her to the barricade were not knotted as securely and tightly as those that bound her son. Men were desperate and low indeed when they do not, consciously or unconsciously, retain some consideration for a woman.

Pizen Jane had discovered, after a time, that she could work her wrists about in the cords. She had said nothing of her discovery, for outlaws were near her, behind the barricade; and out in front paced a sentry.

But she had begun to strain and tug at the cords, finding by and by that they gave a little.

This added to her desire to get out of them, and to that task she bent her endeavors.

Yet a long time went by before she again felt the cords slip and give under her manipulation.

After she was able to draw out one hand she stood for some time in silence, considering what she could do. Apparently, she could do nothing, because of the men near by.

She did not dare to speak of what she had done to Pool, lest she should be overheard.

After that, as she had waited, hoping for something that would create a diversion of which she could take advantage, the slow-moving time had seemed interminable.

But Pizen Jane was possessed of monumental patience.

She had waited, minute by minute and hour by hour, hoping that something would turn in her favor.

At intervals she had strained at the cords which still held one wrist, and at last freed it. Her feet were still tied at the ankles, and her body was still bound to the barricade.

She grew desperate when she saw the gray dawn breaking, and knew that day was near, when inevitably what she had done would be discovered.

She began to strain at the cords on her ankles; and at length, in her desperation, she stooped over, determined to untie them with her hands.

The sentinel out in front saw her do this.

“Hello!” he said. “What ye doin’?”

She stood erect by the barricade, her hands behind her back once more, her lips firmly compressed, and did not answer him.

Long before, Pool Clayton had become little better than a shaking jelly bag, through excess of fright. He hardly knew what the man said, and he had not discovered what his courageous mother was doing.

The man walked up to the barricade, and, stooping over, looked Pizen Jane in the face.

“Hello!” he repeated. “What you doin’?”

Then her hands flew out, and, catching the knife from his belt, she drove it into his shoulder, inflicting a wound that tumbled him back, gasping and half paralyzed.

Before the outlaws on the other side of the barricade knew just what had occurred, Pizen Jane had cut the cords that held her, had stricken loose those that bound Pool Clayton, and was climbing over the barricade, the knife and the sentry’s revolver in her hands.

“Git out o’ my way!” she snarled, striking at one of the men who sought to oppose her progress.

He fell back out of the way of the knife. Then she sprang down, and in another instant she was running toward the huts.

One of the outlaws pitched up a rifle and was on the point of shooting her.

“Don’t do it!” a companion warned, and he knocked the muzzle of the gun aside. “The boss would raise Old Ned wi’ ye, if ye should.”

Though they feared to shoot, a couple of them followed her; but when they reached the huts, though they had followed close at her heels, they could not find her.

One of them poked his head into the hut where Snaky Pete was lying, supposedly asleep.

“Hello!” he called, in a low voice. “That woman has got away, and is in the camp here some’eres.”

Snaky Pete came to his feet, and rushed to the door.

“Where is she?” he cried, his wounded lip cutting him like a knife as he said it.

“Here!” was the startling answer.

Pizen Jane seemed to rise out of the ground before him. She threw up the revolver, and fired full at him. It was the revolver shot that the scout and the troopers heard.

As its report rang out, Snaky Pete Sanborn, the outlaw and desperado, pitched forward on his face, falling dead in the door of the hut.

Pizen Jane had kept her vow.

The charge of the troopers came right on top of this, turning the attention of the outlaws to the task of repulsing the invaders. The fight that followed was sharp and hot, but it was short.

Finding that the troopers were within the camp itself, the desperadoes stationed at the barricades deserted them, climbing them and running for safety out through the pass.

Those within the camp, who had been trapped there, fought with a courage and desperation worthy of a better cause. They slew some of the troopers, and several of their own number fell.

The others tried to get out of the camp, but, being surrounded, they threw down their weapons and surrendered.

The shrill voice of Pizen Jane was heard once, as she took part in the fight against the outlaws; and once the scout beheld her, with smoking pistol, confronting one of the outlaws. When the fight had ended she was found lying dead close by the hut where she had killed her infamous and recreant husband.

Nomad was, of course, released from his unpleasant predicament. He received orders to remain a few hours longer at the camp, in order to observe whether any of the deserters returned with reënforcements—in which case he was to ride at once to Fort Thompson. If none returned, he could rejoin Buffalo Bill and the troopers at the fort, within the next three days.

Pool Clayton seemed genuinely grieved over the death of his mother, and shed bitter tears when he beheld her dead body. He was not held for the crime of being a member of the road-agent band, but was permitted to depart from that section of the country.

That a genuine reformation in his character was effected the scout believed, for afterward he had word of him, at a time when Pool was residing in a mining town called Crystal Spring, where he had secured honorable employment and seemed determined to live an honest life.

CHAPTER XVII. PURSUED BY BLACKFEET.

“Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye! Don’t lose yer head, now, er mighty quick you won’t have no head to lose.”

Old Nick Nomad, the trapper and famous border scout, twisted around in his saddle, jerking at his horse’s bridle, and stared back along the way he had come after leaving the outlaw stronghold.

Nomad was a small, dried-up specimen of a man, dressed in border costume of ancient fashion, even to the beaver-skin cap. He held in his right hand a long rifle. His old horse, ungainly as himself, yet possessed of as many surprising qualities, stepped about, in spite of the jerking rein, and showed every indication of nervousness and fright.

“You’re skittisher’n a two-year-old, and ain’t got any more sense, when you smells Injuns,” Nick grumbled. “Stand still, now; they’re comin’ erlong, I know, but they ain’t nigh enough ter bite ye!”

Old Nebuchadnezzar had made a rapid run since the Blackfeet were sighted, more than two miles back. The homely, shaggy-haired beast had been too fleet for the Blackfeet ponies. His sides were heaving now, and sweat trickled down his legs, dripping to the ground. Yet he was ready to go on; and so much did he fear Indians that he would have run until he fell, if Nomad had but given him rein and urged him a little.

Nomad was trying to determine whether the Blackfeet were coming on, following his trail, or whether they had left the trail and were trying to cut him off at some narrow pass. They were more familiar with this part of the country than he was, and he knew in that they possessed a decided advantage.

After a time of quiet, the Blackfeet had once more become troublesome, under Crazy Snake, whose hatred of the whites had flared forth with sudden fury.

Nomad had, for two days, returned to the old life he loved best of all—trapping by the headwaters of the mountain streams, leading a carefree existence in the open and under the blue sky.

Then, on the last day—the day on which he was to arrive at the fort—trouble and peril had descended on him when he had least expected it.

His traps were stolen or destroyed, his little hut was broken open and robbed, and then Paul Davis, his old-time border partner, who had encountered him in the neighborhood of the outlaws’ stronghold, was slain, while returning one afternoon to the hut from a hunt.

Nomad found Davis’ body in the trail that led down from the higher mountains, and on Davis’ breast a bloody arrow, slashed there with a scalping knife.

The scalp had been torn from Davis’ head, thus proving that the work had been done by Blackfeet, while the bloody arrow showed that this was another “vengeance” blow struck by the chief, Crazy Snake.

Old Nomad was not fool enough to linger there longer. He buried the body of his old friend, protecting it from wolves by a heap of stones placed on the grave. Then he cached his pelts, picked his few belongings, mounted old Nebuchadnezzar, and set his face toward Fort Thompson.

But he was not to escape so easily.

He had not gone far when he discovered that Blackfeet were dogging his trail, for the apparent purpose of surprising him in camp, or while he slept. He was sure these Blackfeet were led by Crazy Snake, who had marked him for another victim.

As Nomad sat staring along the backward way, a herd of elk came in sight, swinging down the trail he had been following. He instantly guided Nebuchadnezzar out of the trail, and let the elk go plunging by, for they seemed to be frightened, and were running at high speed.

“Good enough!” the old man grunted. “I think I kin puzzle them red devils a bit now.”

Sure that wherever the Blackfeet were they did not now see him, Nomad dismounted, and, removing a blanket he carried in a roll behind his saddle, he tore it into strips and wrapped them round the hoofs of his horse, so that he would leave no trail.

A trailless route would make it troublesome for even the keen-eyed Blackfeet to follow him.

Descending the mountain now by a zigzag path, and making, besides, several changes in his course, Nomad succeeded in reaching lower ground. Here he mounted Nebuchadnezzar again, and rode off in a new direction; but several times changed his course, in his efforts to baffle the Blackfeet.

While he was thus riding on, he was astonished by hearing his name spoken. He reined in and faced about, staring in surprise.

“By ther great jumpin’ jack rabbits, ef that ain’t ther queerest ever!” he grunted. “Somebody callin’ ter me hyer, at a p’int whar thar ain’t nobody!”

A pebble came rolling down the side of the hill, the suddenness with which it bounced out at him making him jump. He saw that it had come from a clump of aspens on the hillside not far away.

His ancient rifle swung around with a quick motion, and the muzzle was elevated toward the aspens.

“Hi, there! Don’t shoot,” a voice called. “Like Davy Crockett’s coon, I’ll come down.”

Then a hand appeared, pushing some leaves aside, and, following this hand, came the body of a man.

Nomad gasped his amazement when he saw the clothing and face of this man. Before him stood Buffalo Bill.

Though Nomad’s astonishment was deep, he did not forget the peril in which he was placed at that time.

“Stand whar ye aire, Buffler!” he called. “The pizen reds aire rompin’ round, and aire after my ha’r. Ole Crazy Snake is reachin’ fer me with his fangs.”

He guided his horse up to the aspens where the scout stood; the scout asking questions, which he did not then answer.

“Buffler, I’m gladder ter see ye than ef I’d found a gold mine! Got yer hoss hyar?”

“Yes; just back here in ther trees.”

“Then, fer Heaven’s sake, muffle him, and git out with me, ’fore ther reds finds this spot,” the old trapper urged. “I’m huntin’ fer a hole ter hide in, till Crazy Snake and his Blackfeet villyuns leave this kentry; and it’ll be healthy fer you ter do ther same quick’s ye kin.”

Buffalo Bill did not know until then that Crazy Snake had actually taken to the warpath, though he had known there were rumors of war trouble, and that a number of whites had been murdered. He shook hands with old Nomad, and asked him some more questions. This time Nomad answered:

“I’ve give ’em a good start, and balled ’em some, Buffler, but they ain’t easy ter fool.”

“I know that, Nomad,” the scout answered; “but I think we can fool them.”

He retreated to where his horse was tied to an aspen; and then, taking a blanket from his roll, he made mufflers like those used by Nomad. He looked anxiously at the trail his horse had made in coming to this little grove—some of the hoofmarks deeply scored the soil. But there was no help for that now.

In a few minutes he joined Nomad, mounted, and asked:

“Were you making for the cañon down there?”

“Anywhar, Buffler, ter fool ther Blackfeet. If yer knows this kentry some I’ll let you p’int ther way, fer bur durned ef I’m any too well acquainted with it.”

Buffalo Bill took the lead.

As the two men rode along, they discussed the pursuit of the Blackfeet, and each learned the story of the other.

“I came here from the fort on a scouting trip,” said Buffalo Bill, “because the Blackfeet have killed some men and have been threatening trouble. Since I arrived, a miner was murdered and scalped on the Baldface trail, and a sheep-herder was treated the same way over in Los Cerillos Valley. Both were slain by Blackfeet; yet I didn’t know whether it was simply some single Blackfoot murderer, or was the work of Blackfeet bands of rovers. I rode out here to-day, hoping to find out something more about it.”

“And now y’ve found, Buffler! The red devils aire risin’, and they’re killin’ and scalpin’. Ole Crazy Snake’s bloody arrer will be on the breasts of a good many dead men, ef ther thing continners, I’m tellin’ ye. I thought it war time fer me ter cut sticks, and so I did. I’m glad I met ye, Buffler.”

The scout recounted many of the things that had happened during the past three days, especially the departure of young Clayton, and Nomad told of his trapping experiences.

“I cached what furs I’d got tergether,” he said, “when I was ready to slide out o’ the hills. If ther Blackfeet don’t find ’em, I’ll git ’em some time. Ther thing jes’ now is ter take keer o’ my scalp, which is a good deal more important than a beaver skin, handsome as a beaver skin looks.”

He pushed back his cap and scratched at his head, as if it itched in anticipation of a scalping knife.

They sought lower ground as they talked, and they talked in low tones.

“Nomad, it’s providential that I met you,” the scout told his old friend.

“I dunno about it, Buffler,” said Nomad, with a grin. “If I’d gone straight ahead ’thout tryin’ to break my trail, ole Crazy Snake’s band would have follered me hot-footed. And so they wouldn’t never had a chance ter see you hyar an’ put you in danger. Now they may; fer they’ll pick up thet trail o’ mine, if mortual man kin do it.”

With the scout in the lead, they entered the cañon.

On the rocks just by the water they removed the mufflers from the hoofs of the horses. The animals were then ridden into the water, the rocky bank there holding no trail; and down the stream they rode, keeping in the water. They went on in this way nearly a mile, and then began to follow up a tributary stream.

As the scout rode along, his keen eyes searching either shore, he saw a grove of trees. There were a number of these groves in the lower part of the cañon, whose floor was of soil in places, rather than rock.

“If we can get under cover of those trees without making any tracks doing it, we can probably lie safe there,” he remarked, while Nomad looked at the grove.

“Ole Nebby, hyar, kin do ’most anything, Buffler, but he ain’t learnt to fly yit. And, without flyin’, I don’t see how you’re goin’ ter git inter the midst of them trees and leave no sign. Fer thar’s soil hyar, and not rock.”

“But the grass, you’ll notice, come right down to the water,” said the scout, “and is a thick, firm turf.”

“Go ahead, Buffler; I’m follerin’ ye. Mebbe we kin make it by mufflering ther hoofs of ther hosses. But we can’t muffler ’em very well hyar in ther water, and when we rides out of ther stream with their hoofs bare they’re shore goin’ ter make some tracks.”

Buffalo Bill rode toward the shore.

When close to the grass, but still in the water, he rose to his horse’s back. Standing in the saddle, with the remaining blanket from his roll held in his hands, he threw the blanket so that it fell on the grass at the water’s edge. It fell, folded, as he had wanted it to; and, with a quick jump, he leaped to it from the saddle. By this clever plan, he kept his boots from cutting into the turf and soil.

“You’ve got a blanket, in addition to the scraps you cut the other one into,” he said. “Throw me your blanket.”

Nomad threw the blanket to him, and the scout spread it out beside the one on which he was standing.

He kept his feet off the ground, while he arranged both blankets in the form of a carpet, which touched the very rim of the water. Then he spoke to his well-trained horse, and the obedient animal walked from the water out upon the carpet of blankets. There the scout put on the animal’s hoofs the mufflers, and then commanded it to walk on, ordering it to stop when it had gone far enough.

“Now, Nomad,” he called, “ride old Nebby out upon this carpet, and when we’ve put the mufflers on him I think the trick will be nearly done.”

Nick Nomad complied, dismounting beside his horse on the blankets. The mufflers were put upon the hoofs of Nebuchadnezzar. Then the old man rode him on.

Buffalo Bill called his horse back to him, climbed into the saddle, stooped from the saddle, and picked the blankets from the ground, and called the trapper’s attention to the apparent success of the ruse.

The blankets and the muffled hoofs had prevented the showing of a single hoofmark by the margin of the stream. More than that, they had absorbed the water which ran from the legs of the horses, sucking it up as a sponge would, and holding it; so that not even water remained on the grass there to draw the attention of any eagle-eyed Blackfoot.

The scout and the trapper now rode their muffled horses into the thick grove, where they were completely hidden from view of any one passing along the cañon stream, or on either of its banks.

“Buffler,” said Nomad, filled with delight at the cleverness of his old pard, “ef I’d had head enough I might have thought o’ thet myself; but I didn’t. But I allow thet it’s ther cutest trick I ever saw played ter try ter fool Injuns. Whar’d yer learn it?”

“I thought of it myself just now. I don’t know that any one ever tried it before. And that’s what makes it valuable. If we used some trick that is familiar the Blackfeet would probably be expecting it, and so would not be fooled by it. They’ll not be expecting this trick, I hope.”

CHAPTER XVIII. THE BLACKFOOT TRAILERS.

Under cover of the screening trees, Buffalo Bill and old Nomad watched the cañon and stream, while they talked of the threatened Blackfoot war, and of their individual experiences since they had last been together.

“It warn’t Blackfeet we war up ag’inst last time together, Buffler, but road agents. Pool Clayton was with us then, you recomember? D’yer think he’ll be in this hyar neighborhood soon?”

“I’m not expecting him this time.”

Buffalo Bill told his old mountain pard, however, that Pawnee Bill, the famous dead shot, was to have joined him in the town below, but had missed him there, and would no doubt follow.

“It’s just possible,” he had stated, “that he went round by way of the Ferguson Trail, and, if so, he may have gained these hills in advance of my coming; yet I think he is behind me.”

As the two friends talked thus, Buffalo Bill laid his hand with a quick, firm motion on Nomad’s arm. Reaching out with the other hand, he took his horse by the nose.

“Hist!” came from his lips.

Nomad understood, glanced at the stream, and patted the nose of old Nebuchadnezzar to keep him still.

A Blackfoot warrior had come in sight on the other side of the little cañon river. He was naked, save for a breechclout, and his copper-colored body was smeared and striped with paint. He carried a long rifle, and a knife, and hatchet. In his raven hair eagle feathers fluttered, proclaiming him not only a warrior, but, with the abundant paint, announcing that he was on the warpath.

He had come downstream, and he was scanning the river and its shores, and the cañon walls, together with the wider expanses where the little groves of trees were. But most he gave his attention to the banks of the stream at the water’s edge.

It was plain to the experienced bordermen that if he had not tracked the white men to the cañon and the river, he at least suspected they had gone there, and he was looking for the point where they had emerged. His presence was proof that other Blackfeet were near, and no doubt a strong war party. They had chased old Nomad, and were ready for scalps and plunder.

The concealed friends and their horses stood motionless, as the Indian stepped with light feet along the farther shore of the little river.

He was a magnificent specimen of the American Indian; lithe, as well as muscular, his body straight as an arrow, his limbs sinewy, yet so gracefully and evenly developed that they would have done as models for a sculptor or a painter. Buffalo Bill looked at the Blackfoot with admiration, regarding him at the moment merely as a fine specimen of Indian manhood, forgetting in that momentary enthusiasm what his appearance there meant, and what was denoted by the paint and the floating feathers.

The Indian stared hard at the trees which concealed the scout and the trapper. He neither saw nor heard anything there. On the ground between the river and the grove there was not so much as an indentation in the soil to suggest that horses had passed that way.

“Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye!” Nomad whispered to his horse; for Nebby’s ears were pricked up and his big eyes were staring. Indians frightened him, for which Nomad was responsible, for he had taught the old horse to fear them.

“Nebby is better’n any watchdog,” was Nomad’s boast. “No Injun kin come nigh him without him makin’ a hullabaloo.”

This tendency to make a “hullabaloo” when he saw an Indian had its disadvantages at times, as at present; yet the whispered adjurations of old Nomad, and the touch of his hand, kept the horse quiet as the Blackfoot passed along. As for the scout’s horse, though it had not Nebby’s peculiar tendency, there was, nevertheless, danger that it would make a noise of some kind, hence the scout kept his hand on its nose.

After staring hard at the grove, and scanning the soil by the stream, the Blackfoot went on, and soon he was lost to sight in a bend of the cañon.

“A close shave!” said the scout.

“And a healthy one fer thet red nigger, Buffler,” said Nomad meaningly. “I’d hate fer him to ’a’ smelt us out hyar, fer then I’d had to shot him. And that would ’a’ made a tarnal noise, too.”

“Yes; we’d have been in for a fight.”

“Thar’s more of ’em about, Buffler.”

“They may be a good deal scattered, though; so we may see only this fellow.”

“I’m hopin’ it, Buffler.”

They saw another, in a very few seconds, on their side of the stream. He was armed and painted like the one who had just disappeared, but he was not so tall and handsome. His body was shorter and thicker, his arms longer, his sheer physical strength greater. He could not have run like the one who had just gone on, but in a rough-and-tumble fight he would have been an enemy more to be feared.

He not only looked at the grove where the white men were hidden with their horses, but he walked a few yards toward it, looking carefully at the ground.

Once or twice he stooped down and inspected the grass; and the scout and trapper thought then he had seen some faint indentations in the soil, and guessed of the trick that had been played. But the redskin retraced his way to the river, and went on, searching its shores.

“Phew, Buffler! I thought it war fight, shore thing, then!”

“I, too.”

“I reckon we’re safe hyar, unless they come back and take a notion to look behind these trees. If they does it, thar will be dead Injuns, and fun immediately afterward.”

The Blackfeet did not return. An hour passed, and then another, and nothing was seen or heard; but Cody and Nomad could not be sure that sharp eyes were not watching the cañon from some cliff or cañon precipice; hence they remained concealed in the grove, keeping the horses as quiet as possible, and talking only in low tones.

Not until darkness came did they venture to leave their secure retreat. Even then they moved with the utmost caution, leading the horses instead of riding them, and progressing so slowly that hours elapsed before they came out into the open country below. There the land lay broad and free before them, and the stars pointed the way.

Yet they did not ride toward the town. Instead, they turned back into the hills; for the discovery that the Blackfeet had taken the warpath under Crazy Snake made the scout fearful for the safety of a family he knew, who lived just under the shadows of the big hills.

CHAPTER XIX. THE TRAGEDY OF THE CABIN.

The home of John Forest was a simple and unpretentious one, but it was lighted by the beauty of a girl whom he loved as his own life, his daughter Lena.

Forest was lured by that witch of the world—gold. He believed he had found gold at the foot of Big Tom Mountain, gold in quantities to pay not only for working the mine he soon opened there, but enough to make him rich. He had a brother who had found good ore in a region not many miles away, and his brother’s success encouraged him to “stick it out” even to the bitter end.

The country was forbidding, and the Blackfeet were not far away; yet Forest established his home under the shadow of the mountain, installed in it his daughter as his housekeeper, and set to work.

Like many mines, there was far more promise in the Lady Bird, as he called it, than there was performance. He took out barely enough gold to give him a living and supply him with tools and blasting powder. Daily he kept hoping to strike the “mother lode,” or a seam of gold, or, perhaps, a pocket of nuggets.

He paid little heed to the Blackfeet.

As for callers or visitors, he had a few; one of them being young Bruce Clayton, who had fallen in love with the beautiful face of the miner’s daughter, and who came there as frequently as his new “job” permitted.

Down in the town of Crystal Spring, some miles away, on one of her infrequent visits, Lena Forest learned of the trouble brewing with the Blackfeet, and its cause.

It was a singular story, as she regarded it.

Some white miners had established themselves near Crazy Snake’s village; which, to the Indian mind, was bad of itself; and then one of the miners, falling ill of measles, and not knowing what it was, the disease had been communicated to the Blackfeet.

Treated by Indian medicine men, whose sole idea of medication was to rattle tomtoms and howl themselves hoarse in efforts to drive away malignant spirits, the Blackfeet died like flies. One of the victims of this scourge of the measles was Crazy Snake’s only son.

Believing that the white men had sent this curse on the Blackfeet for the purpose of destroying them, that they might secure the Indian lands for mining purposes, Crazy Snake and some of his warriors attacked the miners’ camp, and slew all in it, including the man who was ill of measles, but who was at the time convalescing. Not content with this summary vengeance, Crazy Snake was now threatening the white people everywhere.

The mark of his visitation was an arrow of blood scored with a knife on the breast of each victim.

This was the startling story Lena Forest brought home to her father.

“The Blackfeet will not trouble us here,” said Forest. “I don’t think they know we’re here, anyway; for not one has come near us all the time we’ve been here. But if trouble seems threatening, we’ll cut out in time to escape it.”

The truth is, that though Forest feared more than he would say, he believed he was at the moment on the verge of opening up that wonderful seam of gold, and the golden lure chained him there. Every day, even every hour, he was sure that the next stroke or two of the pick, or the next few scrapes of his shovel, would reveal the gleam of the shining metal for which he had worked so hard!

No, he could not go just yet, even though Blackfeet threatened. Besides, none had been seen near the house, nor in the hills near it. Really, he tried to persuade himself, there was no danger.

Lena Forest, uneasy, went to the town again, to gain further news of the threatened Blackfoot trouble.

She learned that the danger was really alarming, and that two noted scouts had been sent for, and had arrived—Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill. Her father knew these scouts, and Buffalo Bill was his personal friend. She tried to see them, but found only Pawnee Bill, Cody having departed for the hills.

Pawnee Bill advised her that it was foolish for her and her father to remain in their exposed home at that time, and assured her he would call on her father and tell him so.

The girl returned home, determined more than ever to induce her father to go at once to the town, or to some point of greater security.

When she rode along the path, approaching her home in the gathering twilight, she saw before the door a form lying in a limp heap, a sight that stilled her heartbeats and caused her to reel in her saddle with faintness. Nevertheless, she rode up to it, and, leaping down by it, discovered her father, dead. He had been killed and scalped; and on his breast, where the blue flannel shirt had been torn open, was that dreadful sight, the arrow of blood drawn with a scalping knife.

The girl swooned at sight of it, and fell as if dead beside the dead body.

How long she remained there unconscious she did not know. The stars were in the sky and the wind from the mountain was cold when she aroused and came back to a realization of the terrible thing that had befallen her father and herself.

She threw herself on the inanimate form, and wept as if her eyes were oceans. By and by she struggled to her feet.

Her first thought was of flight, for personal safety, and for help for her father, whose body needed to be protected from wolves and other wild beasts. But she discovered that she had not strength to go anywhere; and this, with thoughts of what might happen during her absence, held her to the dreadful spot.

She crept at length to the cabin, where she procured a candle. With it she returned to her father’s body. Lighting the candle, she put it upright on the ground beside him, knowing that wolves and other wild animals fear such a light. Having done that, she returned to the cabin, this time thinking of finding her horse, which had strayed away, and of riding to the town with the news.

But she swooned again as she crossed the threshold, and fell to the floor, where she lay a long while. This time when she recovered she crawled to the bed, and laid herself down on it. She slept, then; though how or why she did was afterward a puzzle to her.

The sun was shining in through the open door when a voice, the voice of a man, aroused her.

She got up, wild-eyed, her dress disheveled, her face tear-stained.

The man was Pawnee Bill, whom she had seen and talked with in the town. He had ridden out, as he had promised, leaving the town long before dawn, and he had seen in the trail the dead body of John Forest, mute witness of the vengeance of Crazy Snake, the Blackfoot. The famous scout soon saw that the girl was on the verge of a collapse from hysteria and overwrought nerves. She screamed when she beheld him, ran toward him with outstretched hands, and in wild phrases began to tell him of what had occurred.

“My dear girl,” he said, “you do not need to tell me, for I have seen. But let me urge you to try to control yourself. I shall escort you back to the town, and then——”

“But my father!” she wailed hysterically.

“All that can be done for him now will be done, let me assure you.”

The kind-hearted scout was really at a loss what to say and do in this dire emergency, but he induced her to lie down again on the bed; and then he went outside, thinking to get a spade and bury the body of John Forest.

As he did so, he beheld two men coming along the trail. He stared, then recognized them, and ran toward them, calling their names.

They were Buffalo Bill and old Nick Nomad.

It was the family of John Forest that Buffalo Bill had been anxious to warn against the dangers of the Blackfeet.

CHAPTER XX. AN AMAZING DISAPPEARANCE.

Lena Forest came out of the cabin when she heard Pawnee Bill talking with the scouts and the trapper. She recognized the scout, for once he had called on her father, and she ran toward him.

“Oh, if you had but been here sooner!” she wailed.

Buffalo Bill dismounted, and Nomad did the same.

“Yes, we came too late,” said the scout sadly. “I have been talking with Major Lillie, and we think you should be sent at once to the town. Major Lillie will go with you, while my old friend, Nomad, and I will pick up the trail of the Blackfeet murderers of your father. That’s all that can be done now, except to give your father decent burial, which we will do at once.”

He took the girl by the hand, and his kind words caused her tears to flow afresh.

“Now, if you will go back into the house and lie down again for a while it will be better for you,” he urged. “There is absolutely nothing you can do, and you need as much rest as you can get before you start on your trip. We will find your horse; and, if you like, Nomad will go in and prepare something for you to eat, or make some coffee for you.”

“I couldn’t eat a mouthful,” she said.

“But you will go into the house?” he urged.

She understood, turned about with slow feet, and disappeared within.

Pawnee Bill found the miner’s spade and pick, and brought them out for the purpose of digging a grave, which work he and the scout at once began, while old Nomad set forth on Nebuchadnezzar for the purpose of finding and capturing the girl’s runaway horse.

Buffalo Bill and his friend worked rapidly, and soon had a grave hollowed out. Buffalo Bill then went to the house to get blankets in which to wrap the body for burial.

When he entered the cabin, he was astonished not to find the girl there. However, he thought she had but stepped out, and he went to the door to look around. When he failed to see her, he called to her.

To his repeated calls there was no answer.

He stepped out of the house, and walked around it.

Nowhere was the girl to be seen.

There was a rear door, which was unlocked, but was not open, and a rear window, but the window had not been disturbed.

Cody began to search the ground quickly with his keen eyes. He saw a moccasin track by the rear door, yet he was not sure but it had been made at the time the master of the house had been killed. The house had been entered then, and some things had been taken, so the girl had declared. That more had not been taken was a marvel to the experienced scout.

“Gordon, come here!” he called from the corner of the house.

Pawnee Bill dropped the spade he was wielding and came running.

“The girl is gone,” said the scout. “I found her absent from the house, and I fail to see her anywhere.” He looked at Pawnee Bill earnestly. “Was her mind so affected, do you think, that she would slip out of this back door and into the hills, there?” he asked. “If not——”

“What?” said Pawnee Bill.

Buffalo Bill pointed to the moccasin track.

“That is suggestive, if it is new; but it’s hard to tell when it was made. The girl is gone. You heard me call to her, and she has not appeared, nor answered. If she did not go herself, some one took her. That’s why I asked you that question.”

“Her mind was all right,” said Pawnee Bill anxiously. “She was depressed and almost hysterical, but not enough so to make her run away in that fashion, or do anything rash.”

“Then we must investigate this moccasin track at once. You’ll see that an Indian could have slipped up to the house from the hills, and where we were working we could not have seen him. He could have entered by this rear door, and he could have carried off the girl. The question is, did anything like that occur?”

Pawnee Bill was one of the best of the border trailers. He and the scout bent together to examine that moccasin track, after they had scanned the hills for signs there of Indians.

Soon they found another track, and then another, and still another, all leading from the rear door in the direction of the hills.

“They’re fresh,” said Buffalo Bill, pointing to a bent grass blade, which had been crushed so recently that sap was oozing from it.

“And look there!” said Pawnee Bill, picking up a broken feather.

Where the feather was found they discovered indications that a struggle had taken place, for the grass was cut and torn, and the footmarks did not go straight on; there had been an interruption of the progress of the Indian.

“It’s clear as day now,” said the scout, rising and looking about. “Some redskin stole to the cabin while we were busy at the grave. He had seen her enter, and discovered that he could reach the cabin without being observed by us. The girl had lain down on her bed, and was perhaps half asleep, or may have had her head covered up. She did not see him, at any rate, until it was impossible for her to cry out; though his sudden appearance may have so frightened her that she could not utter a sound. Then he picked her up in his arms, perhaps choking her to make her keep still, and he carried her away into the hills.”

His nostrils were dilating and his bright eyes had become feverish, so strongly did this mental picture of the dastardly outrage appeal to his sensibilities.

“You’re right,” said Lillie. “That is an eagle feather, broken, no doubt, when at this point the girl made a fierce struggle to free herself. She tore out the eagle feather; but she could not escape, for he was too strong; and then, no doubt unconscious after that, she was borne rapidly away.”

“That fellow can’t be more than half a mile from here even now,” said the scout. “We’ll have to follow at once. I wish that Nomad——”

Even before he had finished expressing the wish that Nomad was there, they heard his shout, and saw him riding swiftly in on his old horse.

“Injuns!” he said, before drawing rein. “They’ve captered the gal’s hoss and lit out with it.”

“Did you see them?” Buffalo Bill asked.

“No; didn’t need to; but I seen what they done, and I seen their tracks, and the tracks of the hoss. I follered on a ways, to make shore I wasn’t mistaken, and then I rid ter tell ye.”

“The tracks were fresh?”

“Yes; made this mornin’. Buffler, thar’s Injuns snoopin’ round hyar, and thet’s a fact.”

“More than the horse is gone,” said the scout; “the girl herself is gone!”

Nomad stared at the scout, then gripped his rifle and stared round.

“Tooken by Injuns?”

“Yes; that’s what Gordon and I make of it. Here are moccasin tracks. We think the redskin stole into the cabin while we were digging the grave, and came on her perhaps while she was asleep. Anyway, the thing was done so quietly we didn’t hear a sound.”

He pointed to the tracks, and to the eagle feather.

Old Nomad was for the moment almost too amazed to speak.

“We’ve got ter foller her, Buffler!”

“Yes, and at once; and I was going to say to you that if you will finish filling in the grave of John Forest, we will follow this trail at once. Then you can come on as fast as possible, and no doubt you’ll soon overtake us.”

Nomad looked earnestly at the brown hills.

“Crazy Snake?” he said, voicing the name in the thought of each.

“That’s our opinion; at any rate, the rascal was a Blackfoot, as the feather and the tracks show. I hardly think he had any warriors with him, or, at most, he must have had only a few, or he would have tried to tackle us and get our scalps.”

Nomad turned his horse about and rode to the grave, where he slid out of his saddle.

They saw him at work vigorously with the spade, as they took up the trail, after getting their horses.

The trail was not difficult to follow, until it entered the rocky hills.

They progressed slowly, however, for they could not be sure that an ambush had not been laid for them.

Hard as the trail was to follow in the hills, they clung to it, finding it the tracks of but one Indian.

After a little while it bent back in a semicircle toward the river, this showing that the redskin had merely run into the hills to get the benefit of their cover, and that his real destination was the river.

They followed on more rapidly, and some distance below, where hills and trees would screen him from sight of any one at the cabin, they found that his trail converged more, and then went straight toward the cañon stream.

Here the trail was so plain in the soft soil that they were able to follow it at rapid speed, and soon came to the river, where they found water on the rocks, and other evidence to show that at this point the Blackfoot had taken to a boat. It was certain he had gone down the river, and not up; for to go up the river would have forced him to pass so near to the cabin that he would have been in danger of discovery, and, besides, the work of pulling against the current would have been no small labor.

“We’ll have to abandon the horses,” said the scout, when they had ridden rapidly on for a half mile or more down the river, finding the way growing rougher, and the cañon walls contracting until the stream became a walled torrent.

“Or go round, which may be a long journey!” said Pawnee Bill.

“And would be likely to let the rascally redskin slip through our fingers. We’ll have to keep to the river, even if we are forced to swim.”

As they talked, they heard Nomad approaching rapidly. He had finished his work of burying and protecting the body of John Forest, and then had followed hard on the trail of his friends.

It took but a few words to convey to him all that the scouts knew.

“We want you to ride to the town for help,” said Buffalo Bill to him. “Raise a strong force, and come on as fast with it as you can. We’ll stick to this trail. But we’re likely to get into trouble, and we’ll need fighting men, in my opinion, before we accomplish much. The rascal had beaten us temporarily, by taking to the water here; and unless we can get a boat we’re going to have hard work to overtake him.”

“I’m bettin’ it’s Crazy Snake!”

“So we think, though we don’t know it. Spread the news of the rising of the Blackfeet, and hurry with a force to help us, or avenge us.”

The last were ominous words from Buffalo Bill, and proved that he appreciated the dangerous character of the undertaking upon which he now thought of entering.

Nomad wheeled old Nebuchadnezzar in the trail.

“Right ye aire, Buffler,” he said. “I’ll raise ther country, and I’ll be follerin’ ye with a company of men ’fore another twenty-four hours rolls over my head.” He stretched forth his hand. “Shake, Buffler; and you, too, Pawnee! You’re startin’ on a dangerous trip, and I knows it. Mebbe we mayn’t meet ag’in ever in this world. But whatever happens, I know you’ll be found doin’ yer duty.”

He struck his horse with the spurs, waking old Nebuchadnezzar into renewed life.

“Good-by!” he said. “Good luck to ye, pards!”

And then he rode away—the wise, simple, and brave old trapper, Nick Nomad.

CHAPTER XXI. THE PRISONER.

Lena Forest had hardly entered the cabin and stepped toward the bed, where, in obedience to the words of Buffalo Bill, she expected to lie down a while, when a footstep sounded softly behind her, and a blanket fell over her head.

Startled and alarmed beyond measure, she yet would have cried out, but that the blanket was drawn tightly about her mouth, and on top of the blanket a heavy hand pressed back the words she would have uttered. She struggled frantically, but uselessly; for she was caught up in arms too strong for her to resist, and was carried quietly out of the room.

Lena soon knew she was out of the cabin, for the feet of her captor no longer thudded dully on the wooden floor, but descended, as if down steps, and sank in soft grass now without a sound.

Then she began to struggle again, trying desperately to throw off the enveloping and smothering blanket, and making so gallant a fight for her liberty that she tore a feather from the redskin’s head. That feather told her that he was an Indian, which was a thing she had already guessed and feared.

She tried in vain to scream for help when this awful fear that she was held by an Indian became certain knowledge; but again that heavy hand kept her from making more than a few inarticulate sounds; and she was being borne on, she knew not where.

She became unconscious soon, a result largely of the choking and smothering blanket, and for a time thereafter she had no knowledge of anything.

When she was put down at last, arousing at the same time, she succeeded in whisking aside the blanket. Then she saw before her a large Indian, almost naked, smeared with paint, who was drawing a canoe from beneath the bank, and getting it ready, apparently, for a journey on the river that flowed before her.

She recognized the river as the cañon stream that rolled by her home, and she recognized this spot as one she had seen many a time, a mile below the cabin, at a point where the walls of the cañon began to contract on the grassy valley, in readiness for further narrowing farther down.

The Indian saw that she had recovered consciousness, and he swung around, lifting his hatchet menacingly.

“White girl no make noise!” he warned, speaking fair English.

The desire to cry out was frozen in her heart, which was filled with a strange terror of this painted redskin. She stared at him, as the bird is said to stare at the snake in whose power it has fallen.

The savage adjusted the light canoe in the water, stopping in his work now and then to listen, as if he anticipated pursuit.

“White girl go with Crazy Snake!” he commanded, again producing the fear-impelling hatchet, whose bright blade glanced the sunlight like burnished silver. To her imagination that hatchet edge was red with the blood of her murdered father.

She tried now to spring up, and to run; and she tried to cry out. But Crazy Snake, with a single bound, caught her by the hair, and threw her to the ground. He flashed forth a knife, now, and thrust it before her terrified eyes.

“Injun kill!” he gurgled, in a way to make her blood run cold. “White girl want Blackfoot kill?”

“Yes, kill me!” she said, in sudden desperation. “Nothing better could happen to me now.”

However, he did not put his threat into execution, for he had simply been trying to frighten her. He lifted her in his bare, painted arms, and deposited her in the canoe, she being too helpless from fear and weakness to do anything to prevent this. Then he stepped into the canoe himself, pushed it off from shore, and, seating himself deliberately, he took up the paddle and sent the light boat skimming downstream.

The current began to race faster here, and this, with the strokes of the paddle, hurled the canoe on at dizzying speed. Yet this speed was as nothing compared with that which the canoe made later on, when it was caught in the torrent that rushed in wild cataracts through the pinched-in space of the narrowed cañon, where the black walls came close together, and towered to a great height overhead.

Crazy Snake was skillful with the paddle. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the water ahead, and though more than once it seemed to her that the frail craft must surely be split on some rock, with a deft turn he guided it past the danger point, and on down the wild and tumbling stream.

Lena Forest tried to think with something of sanity of her condition, and failed utterly. Horror still held her, and she came from under its spell but slowly.

When the rapids had been passed safely, Crazy Snake began to talk.

“Brown Eyes know why the great Blackfoot chief, Crazy Snake, do this?” he said, naming her thus from the color of her eyes.

She stared at him, as if she did not comprehend his meaning, but really because she was still too terrified to answer him.

“Blackfeet kill man that dig for the yellow earth,” he explained. “The yellow earth makes the white man crazy, and he steals the land of the Indians that he may dig it. So we kill him.”

She knew that he meant her father.

“White men hunting for the yellow earth threw a bad spell on the Blackfeet. The evil spirits were made mad, and killed the Blackfeet. They died. The son of Crazy Snake died. For that we kill the white men.”

She was sitting in the bow of the canoe, facing him, and he stared at her with his shining black eyes, that looked so like the eyes of a snake. She did not wonder that he was called, or called himself, Crazy Snake; for those snaky eyes, to her heated imagination, seemed like the eyes of some deadly serpent. They almost fascinated her.

“But—but why do you—take me?” she gasped at last.

Crazy Snake gave utterance to what seemed almost a chuckle.

“Brown Eyes purty squaw!” he said. “Wide Foot, the squaw of Crazy Snake, is old; he take a young squaw, who is white. The white men will be killed. But the Brown Eyes she will live.”

The statement roused her as nothing had done since the death of her father.

“I would rather die!” she said. “I will kill myself rather than become your—your wife!”

She half rose, and in another second would have leaped into the stream; but he stretched out his long right arm with a quick motion, catching her by her hair, which had come unbound in her struggles with him, and jerked her flat in the bottom of the canoe.

“Ugh!” he grunted. “Brown Eyes fool! Brown Eyes drown herself? No, no! Brown Eyes be the squaw of Crazy Snake.”

She lay there, in the bottom of the canoe, cowering.

He put the paddle into the canoe, and then lifted her to a seat, where she sat weakly, regarding him with looks of terror and loathing.

Then he tried to make her see that he was doing her a great favor; for he declared again that while all the white men were to be killed, she was to be permitted to live, and would become the squaw of a great chief.

She failed to see the beauty of the picture he tried to draw. She preferred death to that.

A little farther down the stream Crazy Snake ran the canoe ashore, where he tied it, after sinking it.

She had been compelled to get out, and sat on the bank watching him sink and conceal the boat.

“Brown Eyes go on!” he said, coming up to her.

It seemed that her terror could go no further; but apparently it did, when from the bushes just ahead there appeared now another Indian.

Crazy Snake showed surprise, thus evidencing that the appearance of this Indian was unexpected even by him.

The Indian was a Blackfoot, and was a young man, whose head displayed the feathers of a chief. For an Indian, he was decidedly handsome; yet the liberal application of paint and grease to his body made him a disgusting sight to the girl prisoner.

His black eyes opened in wide admiration, as he looked upon her.

“Lightfoot is a long way from the village?” said the chief, speaking to the younger Indian, who was none other than the warrior whom the two scouts had observed.

“He was with the party that followed the old trapper,” said Lightfoot. “We lost his trail and could not find it again.”

“If the young men wish to find the old whitehead, they can do it by going up the river.”

Crazy Snake waved his hand in the direction whence he had come. He led the way under the cover of the trees, and then turned to the young Indian, who had followed silently behind the prisoner.

At the first word it was plain that Crazy Snake had taken a new line of thought.

“Can the great chief trust his son?” he said, speaking in the hyperbole characteristic of the red men, for Lightfoot was not related to him.

Lightfoot folded his arms upon his paint-smeared bosom and looked Crazy Snake full in the eye.

“The son of the great chief, Crazy Snake, has but to hear and obey,” he said. “Let the chief speak. Lightfoot is but a child, and will learn wisdom of the great chief.”

They spoke in Blackfoot, of which the prisoner did not understand a word.

She felt so weak and trembling that she was almost on the point of sinking to the ground. She lifted her eyes to heaven, as if praying, and uttered a name, the name of one who, she was sure, would follow to the ends of the earth, to rescue or avenge her, if he but knew. And she uttered, also, the name of Buffalo Bill.

Crazy Snake stopped the words that were on his tongue and gazed at her in a questioning way.

“What does the Brown Eyes say?” he asked.

“Nothing!” she gasped. “Nothing!”

She shook with terror.

Crazy Snake turned again to Lightfoot.

“The young chief is wise,” he said. “Crazy Snake is the great war chief of the Blackfeet. His red arrow burns on the breasts of many white men already, and its bloody fire shall strike fear everywhere. The father of Brown Eyes wears it, and his scalp is now in the belt of Running Deer. But the girl is to be kept in the Blackfoot village. Crazy Snake has work to do, for the white men will gather to avenge the death of the men who wear the crimson arrow.”

Lightfoot stood with folded arms, listening.

“White men, one of them Long Hair, are now pursuing Crazy Snake. So Crazy Snake wishes to turn back; and he wishes to gather warriors, many warriors, to oppose the white men. He would strike the cunning white men down when they follow—strike down the thieves that steal the lands of the Blackfeet that they may dig in it for the yellow earth.”

“The son of the great chief hears,” said Lightfoot, when the older chief paused.

“The great chief will trust Lightfoot to take the white prisoner, Brown Eyes, on to the Blackfoot village, where she is to be held until the coming of Crazy Snake. Does my son hear with open ears?”

“Lightfoot hears what the great chief says.”

The young Indian looked at the girl, who still stood trembling before them. A sudden admiration of her beauty shone in his black eyes, but it was not observed either by the chief or the girl.

“Lightfoot hears, and will obey,” he repeated.

Crazy Snake returned to the canoe, and seemed to consider raising it and resuming the voyage down the river. But he changed his mind, apparently, and, turning from the river, he hastened away, and was soon lost to view.

Lightfoot stood looking at the girl who had been placed in his charge.

“Come!” he said finally. “We go to the village.”

She was listening to the retreating footsteps of the older chief.

“No, I will not go with you!” she declared.

Admiration showed in his eyes. But he was an Indian, and accustomed to having women obey. He caught her by the wrist and jerked her along.

“Come!” he said. “Brown Eyes is very beautiful. It is too bad that she is to enter the lodge of Crazy Snake, who has a wife already.” He was speaking to himself, for his words were Blackfoot, and she did not understand them. “Brown Eyes is too beautiful to be the squaw of Crazy Snake. She should mate with a younger warrior. Is it meet that winter should marry summer? Brown Eyes is young, and she is beautiful.”

He stopped and stood facing her, feasting his eyes on her beauty. There was something in his look that terrified her. She tried to break away from him, but again he caught her by the wrist and pulled her along when she resisted.

“Come!” he said, and this time he spoke in English. “We go fast. Blackfoot town long, long way. Crazy Snake say we go fast.”

CHAPTER XXII. WIND FLOWER.

Crazy Snake had told the young chief that pursuit might be expected, and that was why he was so anxious to hurry on. He felt sure that soon the dreaded Long Hair, as Buffalo Bill was called, would be on his trail. Buffalo Bill’s reputation as a long-distance shot, as a trailer, and as an enemy whose cunning and skill were marvelous, was great among the Blackfeet.

Because of his fear of pursuit Lightfoot stopped now and then to listen. Occasionally, where a small hill invited, he ascended it, dragging the girl with him, and scanned the surrounding country.

Crazy Snake had disappeared, and even the river was not now visible, though the black cliff walls of the cañon could be seen.

Finally the young chief gained the point where he had left his horse hidden.

Lena Forest was almost exhausted by that time, through fear and the exertions she had been forced to put forth. Lightfoot had been merciless in dragging her on, over obstructions, across chasms and rocky tracts, and through bushy districts where thorny shrubs tore her clothing and lacerated her body.

Several times she had dropped down in sheer weakness and desperation; but at such times he had assumed the ferocity of the old chief himself, and, drawing his hatchet, he had threatened her until she had risen and stumbled on again.

When the little grove was gained where his horse had been left, Lightfoot was given a shock of surprise. The horse was gone.

He looked about in fear and anger, his black eyes searching for footprints of a thief and the hoofmarks of the horse.

A rippling laugh, strange and wild, came to him from a little distance.

Lena Forest looked toward the point whence it emanated, and was astounded to see an Indian girl rise there from behind a rock and come forward. The girl seemed amused when first she appeared; but a frown was on her brown face as she approached the girl prisoner and the young chief.

“The Wind Flower!” gasped the young chief, speaking below his breath. “What does she here?”

“Oh, mighty chief,” she said in mockery, “where is thy horse? I see it not. The eagles must have carried it away!”

He regarded her uneasily. “Wind Flower has taken it,” he said. “Where has she placed it? And what does she here?”

The Indian girl laughed again, a rippling laugh that had in it something of the music of running water, for it seemed to bubble and gurgle in her brown throat. Yet that suspicious and questioning light remained in her eyes.

“I found the horse of the great chief, Lightfoot! I am but a squaw—not a mighty warrior and hunter. But I could have taken his horse and ridden it far from here, if I had willed. The mighty young chief is like the bear that sleeps when the winter winds blow; he does not see, and he does not hear. An enemy might have taken his scalp, as well as his horse.”

He shifted nervously on his feet under this rebuke, and looked at her furtively as she turned to Lena Forest, throwing out one brown hand in a significant gesture.

“Where is the young chief taking the white woman?” she asked, and at the question jealousy flashed in her dark eyes.

Lena Forest understood this language of the eyes, even though she could not understand the words. Jealousy is the same, and expresses itself much the same way; whether it burns in the heart of a white woman or of an Indian maid. She saw that this Indian girl loved Lightfoot, and guessed that she was probably his promised wife. The discovery, if it was a discovery, gave her hope.

She stretched out her hands to the Indian girl.

“Oh, tell him to let me go!” she begged, in pitiful tones. “You are a woman and can sympathize with me. Ask him to let me go!”

Wind Flower looked at her curiously, while a red flush crept into her brown cheeks, giving them an added beauty.

“Why white girl here?” she said, speaking English with difficulty, and giving the words a queer pronunciation. “Why white girl with Lightfoot?”

Lightfoot himself answered her.

“It is at the order of the great chief, Crazy Snake,” he explained. “The white girl is the prisoner of Crazy Snake. He took her from her cabin, after the Blackfeet had killed her father, and he has ordered me to take her on to the Blackfoot village. She is to become the white squaw of the great chief, Crazy Snake.”

Wind Flower looked at him so sharply that it seemed the fire of her black eyes burned into his very soul.

“Does the young chief speak with the forked tongue of the serpent?” she demanded. “Does he not love the white girl, and does he not take her for himself?”

Lightfoot protested that this was not true, and repeated his assertion that he was but obeying the orders of Crazy Snake.

“Wind Flower has concealed my horse in the glen beyond?” he asked, finding that his protestations were not without effect.

“Perhaps it was stolen and is now far away!”

“I know it is in the glen beyond.”

He walked on into the glen, and there found not only his own horse, but the one which the Indian girl had ridden. When he returned he brought both with him.

Wind Flower sat on a stone, regarding the white girl distrustfully, while the latter was appealing to her with a multiplicity of words and gestures.

“We will go on together,” said Lightfoot, speaking to the Indian girl. “Why is Wind Flower here, so far from the village?”

“The chief sees the bow and the arrows on my horse,” she answered. “I hunted the deer, and he came in this direction, so that I followed. Then I found the horse of the young chief, and from the top of the hill I saw the young chief and his prisoner.”

“We will go on together,” he repeated.

He turned his horse about and commanded Lena Forest to mount to its back. Then he walked beside the horse, leading it, while the Indian girl, assisting herself to the back of her own animal, rode at his side.

Lena Forest was buoyed somewhat with hope, since meeting this Indian girl; she believed that one of her own sex, even though an Indian, would be less heartless than a Blackfoot warrior.

The horses did not go fast enough to suit Lightfoot, and he dropped behind, and lashed them on with switches, running at their heels.

He still was not traveling as rapidly as he desired. Fear of Long Hair lay heavily on him.

“Will Wind Flower stay here with the white girl prisoner of Crazy Snake, while Lightfoot goes to the top of the hill?” he asked at length. He gave it as an order, though wording it as a question; and then began to climb the hill, leaving the two girls there on the horses. In a few moments he had disappeared from sight.

Again, with pleading words, the white girl began to beg for the assistance of the Indian.

A strange look was in the face of the Indian maid, and Lena Forest believed it denoted a yielding, and so her hopes rose swiftly.

Wind Flower drew nearer, forcing her horse close up against that ridden by the prisoner. She stared with her black eyes into the brown orbs of the prisoner.

“The paleface loves the young chief?” she said, her voice tremulous. The words were articulated queerly, but their meaning was plain.

“No, no, no!” stammered Lena Forest. “That is a mistake. I do not love him—I am afraid of him. I want to go to the white people—my people. We can go now. We have the horses, and he is afoot. Let us go now. You are a woman. Help another woman who is in trouble.”

The black eyes looking into hers burned with a dangerous fire.

“The white girl lies!” said Wind Flower.

“No, no! My father was killed, and I am a prisoner. Let me go; help me to get away.”

“Would the white girl go to the white people?”

“I swear it! Oh, I swear it! Help me to get away. Perhaps I can pay you in some way! Perhaps I can——”

“The white girl’s tongue is crooked as the tongue of the mother of all serpents! She loves the young chief. She would take him from Wind Flower. And for that she dies!”

She drew a knife and struck with sudden fury at the breast of the swaying girl before her. But her horse chanced to shift its position, and her blow fell short.

Lena Forest screamed in fear, and began to belabor her horse, urging it on.

As her horse jumped into motion, the wild thought that perhaps she could now escape came to her; and she beat the horse with her hands and kicked his side with her heels. He started into a quick jogtrot.

The Indian girl rode after her, and again tried to get near enough to strike with the knife. As she did so the bushes parted, and Lightfoot came bounding upon the scene.

He shouted at the furiously jealous Indian girl in anger, and, with quick bounds, caught the horse ridden by Lena Forest, throwing it back, with a heavy jerk on the bridle.

“Does Wind Flower love death?” he demanded of the Indian girl, facing her now, while holding the bridle of the horse ridden by the prisoner. “The vengeance of Crazy Snake is keen as his scalping knife. He will strike Wind Flower to the earth, if he knows of this. What does my little sister mean by it?”

The anger seemed to die out of the face of the Indian girl, to be replaced by a look of fear.

“The rough wind of the mountain blew on the head of Wind Flower, and it made her wild,” she said. “But the wind has passed, and she is well again.”

He shot her a keen glance.

“Be careful that the mountain wind does not strike the head of Wind Flower again,” he warned; “it might take it off, and roll it down the hillside!”

He glanced back along the trail, and then at the half-fainting white girl. He drew his hatchet and waved it in her face.

“We go on!” he said. “But the mountain wind still blows!”

Then he again got behind the horses and drove them on with switches, getting increased speed out of them.

The brown face of Wind Flower had assumed a dark, leaden hue, as wild emotions raged and burned in her heart.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE FLIGHT OF THE FUGITIVES.

That he might hasten along faster, and at the same time conceal his trail in the tracks made by horses that had passed, the crafty young chief soon left the rough and rocky hillsides, and entered the regular mountain highway that connected the town below with some of the mines above.

This was the trail which Lena Forest used in making her infrequent visits to the town. And when she saw it, and knew that her captor was intending to enter it, her hopes rose again, and gave her renewed strength.

Lightfoot was shrewd enough to know that since the Indian scare there was not much likelihood that any wayfarers would be encountered on that trail. What he feared were the men whom he believed to be following him—Buffalo Bill and his comrades, of whom Crazy Snake had told him, and against whom he had been warned.

Lightfoot was light of foot, as his name indicated; in truth, he was a copper-colored Mercury, so fleet of foot and untiring was he. Fast as he could drive the horses on, he had no trouble in keeping at their heels.

He drove them down the trail, which here curved and wound round and over the hills, dipping and rising and losing itself in many a charming spot.

Lena Forest looked hungrily ahead, whenever a rise of the trail gave her an extended view, always hoping to see there white horsemen.

At first this crafty maneuver of Lightfoot’s puzzled her, for he seemed to be going toward the town, when she naturally anticipated that he would wish to keep as far from it as possible. But soon she began to understand, when she saw, by glancing back, that the hoofprints of the horses and his own moccasin tracks were lost in the other tracks, which, in such numbers, had beaten the ground hard as flint.

She saw, too, that it was probably his purpose to leave this main trail at some point, after utilizing it all he could, and that he would then strike again into the rocky hills, and hold his course toward the Blackfoot village.

The white girl and the Indian maid talked little as the horses were thus driven on. Lena Forest had about lost hope of being able to persuade this Indian girl to help her; and she thought it not wise, anyway, to express her desires when Lightfoot could hear, for he had shown a pretty clear understanding of English.

Though the Blackfeet were now threatening a bloody war on the whites, there had been in the recent past so much intercourse and trading between the two races that most of the Blackfeet, men and women, had picked up a fair smattering of the language of the white men, so that they could understand it at least in its simpler forms.

By and by the fear of the pursuers he believed to be following became so strong in the mind of the young Indian chief that once more he left his prisoner in charge of the Indian girl, and stole away for the purpose of climbing a hill, that he might look backward over the way he had come.

The place selected for leaving the horses and the prisoner was a dark hollow, where the trail made a quick bend round rocks, and where bushes, growing in each side of the trail, made good cover.

Those bushes shut him from sight of the prisoner and the Indian girl almost as soon as he started on his way.

Lena Forest was about to begin her petitions again, and was trying to summon enough courage to try to make an escape if there was another refusal, when the bushes near by rustled, and a young man stood forth, leveling a revolver at Wind Flower.

“Don’t move!” he commanded.

The face of the girl prisoner became white as chalk when she saw him, and she seemed about to slide in a faint from her horse; but she maintained her balance, and whispered:

“Bruce! Oh, save me, dear!”

The Indian girl became rigid as stone from fear; her black eyes opening in fright when she looked into the muzzle of that revolver. Her lips trembled and opened, as if she meant to call for help.

“Don’t move!” came the command again.

The young white man, dressed in miner’s clothing, stepped out quickly.

“Down from the horse!” he said, his voice low but commanding.

The words were addressed to the Indian girl; and, backed by the revolver, it seemed that she would not dare to disobey them. Yet as she slid to the ground, she screamed aloud for help, and threw her arms round the neck of the young white man, surprising and handicapping him.

That scream, and the fact that her lover, Bruce Clayton, was there to help her, and needed help now himself, aroused the dormant energy of Lena Forest.

She caught the rein of her horse and jerked the animal toward the combatants—for at the moment the white man and the Indian girl were struggling in lively conflict—and then she tried to get down and go to the youth’s assistance.

The horse gave a jump, being frightened, and she fell to the ground. This scared the other horse. He, too, gave a rearing plunge, and went clattering down the trail, and out of sight beyond the fringing bushes.

“Let him go!” Lena Forest panted, as she dashed at the Indian girl.

But Clayton had caught hold of the Indian girl, and now he threw her from him. She staggered, and then fell to the ground.

Clayton caught the half-fainting white girl in his arms, and in another moment he was running with her along the trail, following the course taken by the scared horses.

On the hillside sounded a whoop, showing that Lightfoot had heard the outcry, suspected something of the character of what was happening, and was bounding down the hill.

Clayton had a horse below, at the side of the trail, concealed in a small grove; and for that grove he now made lively tracks. He reached the horse, and threw his sweetheart into the saddle; then he sprang up himself, mounting with surprising speed and agility. Catching her close in his arms again, he drove the horse into the trail, and sped on.

Behind him he heard another whoop—an Indian war whoop now, telling him that the enraged redskin was pursuing, or, at least, that he would pursue instantly.

Clayton lashed the horse; and, in spite of its double burden, it fairly flew along the winding trail.

“We’re all right!” he said to the girl he clasped in his arms. “I don’t understand it, but you’re safe now, Lena; and I think God must have sent me along the trail at just that time, that I might save you from that wretch.”

She shuddered, put her arms round his shoulders, and nestled closer to him.

It seemed a delightful dream—this sudden transition from her position as the prisoner of a painted Indian into the arms of the youth she loved, and whom she had promised to marry.

“You’re all right now?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she whispered; “only—only terribly frightened!”

“Still frightened? You’re safe now as can be.”

“I mean that I—I was frightened and I’m so weak that I don’t think I could walk; but this is heaven, after that—after I thought I was to be taken to the Blackfoot village, and there forced to become the squaw of an Indian.”

“That young Indian chief?”

“No; Crazy Snake!”

“The infernal villain! He was with that young chief? I didn’t see him.”

“But he captured me—slipped on me in the house, after father was killed, and——”

“Your father dead?” He was shocked at the sad news.

“Yes—dead—dead!” She sobbed again. “He was killed by the Blackfeet, and——”

She choked and could not go on.

“Tell me about it,” he urged.

She told him, brokenly, and in as few words as she could.

He was silent a while, his eyes fixed on the trail, and his hearing strained backward in anticipation of pursuit.

“I knew the Blackfeet were rising, and I heard you had been in town,” he said. “So I thought I’d ride out, and have a talk with you and your father; for I thought it wasn’t any longer safe for you to stay out in that lonely place.

“That’s how I happened to meet you on the trail. I saw the Indian coming, driving the two horses; but, truly, I didn’t know then one of the persons riding was you.

“I didn’t know what to expect of the Indian; so I hid my horse in the grove, and went into concealment myself at the bend in the trail; for I didn’t know but I might be needed, seeing that the riders of the horses seemed to be women.

“When I saw that you were one of them, I was too astonished for anything. And then the Indian went up the hill; and——Well, you know the rest.”

“Oh, you are so brave!” she said.

“Not I. You see, anybody would have done that; and when I saw that it was you, I’d have died there fighting that rascal to get you away from him.”

“If he gets those horses, he’ll follow us,” she said, glancing back along the trail.

“He’ll follow, anyway, I think, horses or no horses; and some of those Indians can run like antelopes. The trouble is, he’s likely to get help.”

“He is a good runner.”

“He didn’t insult nor abuse you?”

“No; but I was dreadfully afraid of him. The girl was jealous of me.”

“Jealous?”

“The young chief is her lover, I think; and she fancied he was taking me to his wigwam.”

He laughed then.

“It was no laughing matter,” she said.

“No, of course not; very far from it. But it’s amusing to think she could be jealous of you.” He drew rein suddenly. “Hello! There are Indians down below. Blackfeet, too, and they’re coming this way; but I don’t think they’ve seen us. We’ve got to leave the trail and get into the hills here.”

He looked for rocky ground, and drew the horse out upon it.

The knowledge that another peril confronted her served to make Lena Forest more courageous. She released herself from her lover’s arms, and sat upright, shifting to a position behind him, where she would less hamper his movements. He chose rocky ground for the horse, and went on as fast as he could.

“We’ll be all right until these Blackfeet meet that young chief. And then they’ll learn about us, and, of course, will follow us at once.”

“They’re mounted, too!”

“Yes, on Indian ponies; and those ponies are better able to climb about these rocky hills than this big horse is. We must get as big a start of them as we can.”

He drove the horse on without mercy, forcing it at a swift pace over the rough country, trying all the time to pick ground that would leave a poor trail.

As they thus rode on they heard the wild war whoops that announced either their discovery, or that the Indians had encountered the young chief, Lightfoot, and learned from him what had occurred.

“Now, we must ride—ride!” said Clayton, and he bent forward in the saddle, lashing the horse on, and using the spurs mercilessly.

Again the wild yells of the Blackfeet broke forth.

“They may be yelling for some other reason,” she said, trying to encourage her lover.

“Yes; they may have sighted Cody and Pawnee Bill,” he assented. “There’s no telling; but they’ve struck something, some trail or some enemy, and, like a pack of hounds when the game is scented, they can’t help yelping.”

The path grew rougher, if that can be called a path which was more than half the time but a broken game trail, that played out and began again in the most eccentric manner. They had gained a high shoulder of the hills, and below them lay open country, that stretched on into illimitable distances, where there was much coarse grass.

“There is one way of defeating those scoundrels—of keeping them from seeing our trail,” said Clayton, at last; “and that is to burn it.”

“Burn it?”

“Yes; ride down into that, and fire the grass, and then make our flight behind the fire and the smoke.”

“And have the fire overtake us and burn us to death! But try it; I’d rather be burned to death than to fall into the hands of those awful and merciless Blackfeet.”

He guided the horse down the slope and on toward the grassy levels that lay beyond. Ten minutes later he was well out in the grass.

Here he stooped from the saddle, pulled a handful of dry grass, to which he applied a lighted match, and then threw it down.

While he did this the horse stood panting, sweat dripping from it.

Young Clayton had seen that he must do something desperate, if he escaped the Blackfeet; and this was the thing he was now to try.

The burning grass communicated fire to that surrounding the horse. Clayton sent the animal on, and with a few leaps it left the conflagration behind it.

The remarkable manner in which the fire spread through the dry grass was worthy of comment. It flamed up with a roar. Seeming to create a wind from the rising currents of heated air, the fire began to run before the breeze, leaping along in an amazing way.

It spread round from the spot where it had been started, burning backward toward the hills and outward in the direction taken by the horse.

“Now, for a race!” thought Clayton, struck by a sudden fear, as he saw how fast the fire was spreading. “Maybe that will be worse to get away from than the Blackfeet; and if anything should happen to the horse we’ll have to run for our lives!”

He voiced none of this to the girl.

“The Blackfeet haven’t been sighted yet,” he said to her. “They’ll know, of course, or guess, that we’ve taken to the grass, and set it on fire; but after that black smoke gets to rolling and the fire to running good, it will be hard for them to tell where we have gone, and I defy them to follow our trail after the fire has burned the grass.”

Before he had ridden a mile the fire was flaming in high billows behind him, and the smoke, black and thick, filled the sky.

Clayton began to be somewhat alarmed.

In desperation he had entered this grassy land and had fired the grass, but he seemed not to have bettered his position, in spite of the blaze. Indeed, if the fire ringed him in, or overtook him, his situation would be worse than before.

Though his face paled, he spoke hopefully to the girl who clung to him.

The Blackfeet were still unseen; and, indeed could hardly have been seen now through the pall of smoke and the billowing flame, even if they had come riding straight down from the hills in chase.

The horse was a gallant animal, and was standing up splendidly to the work, yet the strain was beginning to tell. Its sides were heaving, its head was sunk low, and its whole body was covered with a white lather of sweat. Its nostrils gaped wide and red as it plunged onward.

If the horse had been fresh, the hopes of Bruce Clayton would have mounted high, for its gait was faster than the running advance of the fire; but the horse was becoming exhausted. It had been tired even before he encountered the young Indian chief, and since then he had driven it hard.

Three miles away, and lying along the rocky rim of the cañon which held the river, was a long strip of woodland.

On the other side were the hills.

The open, grassy country lay straight ahead between these two.

The speed of the fire, as it now pursued him, admonished Clayton that safety demanded he should not hold to the straight-ahead line. The fire would run on indefinitely, but the horse could not do so. The Indians were in the hills when last he heard them; and for that reason chiefly he turned the horse toward the distant fringe of timber.

“We can make those trees without trouble, I think,” he said, encouraging the girl, whose terrified backward glances he had observed.

“But the fire is coming very fast!” she said.

“And we are riding fast!”

“But it is gaining on us. The horse has lost speed in the last mile. The poor thing is exhausted.”

“Still, I think we can reach those trees. We’ve got to do that.”

The horse stumbled, bringing a cry from the girl; but righted, and galloped heavily on. Soon it stumbled again.

Then before them they beheld a yawning rent in the earth, like a large and deep ditch. It was in fact a dry waterway, cut by rains that came in some torrential storm down from the hills. It was impossible to go round this gap in the earth.

Driven by spur, whip, and voice, the tired horse tried to leap it. It rose in the air, making a gallant effort, but lacked strength to carry it across, and went falling down, down, into the great gully.

Lena Forest screamed as the horse took that plunge.

Clayton gripped tightly the rein, caught hold of the horn of the saddle, yelled for the girl to cling to him, and steadied himself for the shock of the fall.

The horse struck with stunning force, and rolled over, throwing the girl to one side.

Clayton was hurled from the saddle over the horse’s head, where he lay, unconscious and white-faced.

Lena Forest scrambled up unhurt, but dazed and frightened. Then she screamed again, as she saw Bruce lying there as if he were dead.

And on came the fire, roaring and writhing, shooting up crackling flames that seemed to laugh in glee, as if they realized the terrible predicament of the girl and her brave lover.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE SCOUTS’ PURSUIT.

Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, or Kulux-Kittibux, as he was known among the Indians, after the departure of Nick Nomad, began a search along the cañon stream. They left their horses behind them, for the ground was too rough for a horse to get over it.

The thing for which the eagle eyes of the scout were searching was seen by him at last, when he began to despair of finding anything of the kind.

“There it is, Gordon,” he said, pointing.

What seemed a foot section of twisted vine rose from the water, and was wound in the most natural manner round the root of a tree.

Buffalo Bill scrambled toward it, and soon had his hand on it.

“Yes, just as I thought,” he said, and he began to pull on the thing.

Soon it lengthened, and a sunken canoe rose into view. It had been sunk cleverly there by its Indian owner; and the painter of time-stained rawhide, twisted round the root in imitation of a vine, the Indian had felt sure could not be distinguished from an actual vine.

The canoe was drawn from the water, and the water poured out of it. Then the two friends entered it. Buffalo Bill took up the paddle that had been lashed to the canoe, and turned the bow down the stream.

They ran the rapids successfully.

Because of the speed with which the current hurried them on, and also because of the cleverness of Crazy Snake, they did not see where he had concealed and sunk the canoe in which he had gone down the stream; but swept on past it, and soon again were in rapids that bore them farther and farther from that spot.

Finally they abandoned the canoe, after sinking it and marking the place, and went along the banks of the cañon stream, trying to find the trail of Crazy Snake.

“He’s been too much for us,” the scout admitted, when, after long searching on either shore, and for a long distance up and down the river, they were still in the dark. “The rascal was Crazy Snake, I don’t doubt; and he’s one of the cleverest and least crazy of all the Blackfeet.”

As they continued this search, they saw black smoke roll up from the wide stretch of low grassland that fell away from the foot of the hills.

Trees and hills intervened to keep them from at once seeing the fire which gave birth to the smoke.

When they climbed a hill, and the scout leveled on the grassland his field glasses, the smoke and fire had attained such volume that the fugitives riding away before the flames were not visible to him.

Nor could he and Pawnee Bill detect any Indians out there, or in the hills adjacent.

“What’s the meaning of it, Cody?” Pawnee Bill asked.

The scout could not tell him. There were many ways in which such a fire might have started.

The thing was so suggestive, however, that the scouts hung about the edge of the grassland, close down by the river, a long time, looking for Blackfeet along the slopes of the hills.

At length they were astonished by seeing a young man come staggering out of the cañon and running toward them.

He had seen them, and was trying to reach them. As he drew nearer, they saw that his face and hands were blackened, as if by fire or smoke; and he not only staggered, but fell, as he came on.

“Blackfoot deviltry, I reckon!” said Pawnee Bill.

They ran to meet the young man.

Pawnee Bill now recognized him as the thoroughly reformed youth he had met in the town the day before, and with whom he had talked on the subject of a probable Blackfoot uprising.

“Why, it’s Clayton,” he said. “Pool Clayton. He’s hurt, I think.”

Clayton was gasping from the effects of his violent run. As soon as he reached them he began to tell his story, and it amazed them:

“The girl whose father you were burying,” he said; “the girl who was carried away by Crazy Snake from the cabin, she——”

He stopped, choking for breath.

“Yes; go on!” the scout begged.

“I found her in charge of a young Indian called Lightfoot, who had an Indian girl with him; and I took her away from them. They followed us, and other Blackfeet chased us. We took to the grass country, which I fired, thinking thus to hide the trail of my horse. We were both riding one horse. But the horse was weakened by the long run from the fire, and finally fell into a deep gully, in trying to leap it.

“I struck on my head, and didn’t know anything for a while. When I came to myself the girl was gone. I couldn’t find any trail, or anything; and I don’t know what became of her, or what to make of it. The girl was Lena Forest, and she said you——”

He stopped again, coughing and out of breath, but he had told enough to stir them into the most intense interest.

“Guide us to that gully,” said Buffalo Bill.

They started at once, Clayton, telling more of his story as they hurried on.

His smoky, grimy appearance was caused by the fact that in reaching them he had passed through a portion of the burned area.

He conducted them as quickly as possible down the cañon, and then out into the burned grassland, to the spot where his horse had tried to leap the deep gully, and had fallen into it.

The horse was found there, dead, for in its fall it had received injuries which killed it.

Clayton and the scouts, in gaining this spot, followed the gully from the cañon, thus remaining below the level of the grassland; a fact they counted on to keep them out of sight of any Blackfeet in the hills.

The young man showed them where he had fallen, and where he had searched, after his return to consciousness.

They took up the work where he had dropped it, giving to it their great skill.

There were no tracks visible at first in the burned grass; but when they had gone up the gully some distance they found an Indian trail. Two pairs of moccasins had come down from the hills to that point, where they had entered the gully.

As they had not climbed out of the gully on the other side, it was certain they had either gone back, or up or down it.

They had not gone back, and the scouts began to search the gully closely.

Then they found faint traces of the moccasin tracks on the hard soil, with the toes pointing down the gully.

Following this faint trail, they discovered that the Indians had reached the point where now lay the dead horse.

The rest was plain. They had captured the girl and taken her on with them; and, being in a hurry, through fear, perhaps, they had not stopped to scalp the young white man who lay there unconscious, and whom no doubt they thought dead.

“They went with her to the cañon,” was the declaration of Buffalo Bill, when he had spelled this out from the dim writing in the soil of the gully.

They hastened on to the cañon, and soon reached it.

The stream roared and raced before them.

On the opposite side was a high, unscalable wall, showing conclusively that the Indians and their prisoner had not gone that way.

“Gone downstream,” said Buffalo Bill; “and, of course, they went in a canoe, for they couldn’t have done otherwise.”

There was nothing to do now but to retrace their way to where the scouts had sunk the Indian canoe, raise it, and set out down the river, following the blind water trail taken by the Indians and their captive.

The mental state of young Clayton may be imagined while this search was being made, and now when this canoe pursuit was begun. Yet he tried to be hopeful, and he was resolutely courageous.

He crouched in the stern of the canoe, wishing that he had in his own hands the stout ash blade which the scout was wielding so skillfully in the bow. He felt that the speed of the canoe was slow, very slow, though it was going as fast as the nature of the channel warranted.

Rocks jutted up in the stream here and there, and at sharp bends the rocks at the sides threatened the canoe as it swung round them.

Buffalo Bill gave his sole attention to the stream and to the paddle.

The other scout kept his keen eyes busy in searching the walls and the shores and the stream ahead, lest the canoe should be run into an ambush.

Soon the speed of the canoe ought to have satisfied even the wild anxiety of the young lover. The current had quickened again into cataracts that tossed and hurled the little craft about as if it were but an eggshell. The rate at which it flew on was enough to take the breath of the canoemen.

Buffalo Bill poised and dipped his paddle with rare skill. It needed a good eye, a strong arm, and a steady brain, and he had all three.

A rock reared itself in the center of the stream, and the current threw the canoe at it, as if to split it in two; but the unerring paddle swept the canoe to one side, and the dangerous rock shot past, with the water boiling white round and over it. A swift turn of the channel threw the canoe over against the wall of dark granite, as if to smash it there; but again the paddle urged it back into the middle of the boiling water, and held it there, as it sped on with arrowy swiftness.

The cañon walls came closer together, pinching in, confining the water, and increasing the strength of the current. The waterway grew dark, as if enveloped in twilight; yet the white water swirling and boiling over and round sharp, up-thrust rocks could still be seen, wherever the rocks lifted themselves like hungry teeth. Around these, dipping and paddling lustily, the scout guided the dancing canoe.

Clayton was hanging on as if for dear life, for now and then the canoe rose into the air and gave a leap as it took some cataract and shot on, the waters roaring about the canoe in a fearful din.

At last the cañon opened, brightening ahead; and soon the worst of the perilous way was past, with smoother water opening before them.

Pawnee Bill watched keenly for some indications on the shore that would show that the captors of the girl had left the river with her here.

The boat moved on more slowly, to enable him to do this; but no signs of such a disembarkation were to be seen.

Soon before the canoe loomed the darkness of another narrow reach of the cañon.

“Shall we go into it?” the scout shouted.

“Yes,” said Pawnee Bill. “They haven’t landed here; so they must have gone on.”

The canoe shot, with dizzying swiftness, toward the dark opening, the current again running beneath the keel with race-horse speed, requiring, for the safe management of the canoe, all of Buffalo Bill’s marvelous skill with the paddle.

It was seen, when they were fairly in the dark opening, that here the cañon roofed itself overhead; so that the river ran through a black tunnel, making thus practically an underground river.

Neither of the three men had ever been on this part of the river before; but Clayton recalled what some of his former associates, the outlaws, had told him of an “underground river,” called the Bitter Water, that cut through a cañon in these mountains. He knew now that he was afloat on that underground stream.

What the result would be he could not foretell. But he recked not of the danger. If Lena Forest had been taken through it, he would not hesitate to follow; no, not even if it led him to death.

“Hold hard!” Buffalo Bill shouted, for the canoe was jumping and bucking like a wild horse. “Hold hard!”

Pawnee Bill could not use his eyes to much advantage in a search of the black walls; and as for the young man, he had all he wanted to do to cling to his place as the canoe flew on.

The darkness became like ink, showing that the river was here completely walled in; and it seemed to him that the water grew rougher, while certainly its roar was much louder, due to its closed-in condition. The roar was thunderous now.

But on the canoe went, through the darkness and the howling noise, whether to destruction, or to be guided through to safety, Bruce Clayton could not tell.

CHAPTER XXV. AGAIN A PRISONER.

Lena Forest had been recaptured by the handsome young chief, Lightfoot. By hard riding, he and a comrade had circled round the eastern end of the line of fire, only to find their horses exhausted by the terrible run and themselves driven back by the flames.

They abandoned their horses, and when the fire died down along the edge of the rocky hills, they set out across the burned area on foot.

They had become separated from the other Blackfeet, also, in the wild chase. Lightfoot had lost sight of the young Indian girl, Wind Flower.

His present companion was a young brave who stood ready to yield him obedience as a chieftain of the Blackfoot nation. With this young warrior, whose name was Red Antelope, Lightfoot came finally to the gully.

They could not leap it because of its width, and this fact induced the young chief to think that perhaps the horse of the white man had not been able to get across.

To break their trail, Lightfoot descended, with his companion, into the gully; and then they went on down, until they reached the point where Clayton’s horse had fallen.

They saw the girl bending over the prostrate youth, and the horse lying dead. She did not see them, so wrapped was she in her grief and in her frantic efforts to restore life to the seemingly inanimate form of her hero.

Under the conditions, they had no trouble in approaching her and making her again a prisoner.

Lightfoot was on the point of lifting the scalp of the apparently dead white man, when a sound off in the distance made him think that enemies were near and haste was desirable; so he caught up the girl, and, with the aid of Red Antelope, bore her hastily toward the cañon. There they brought to light a sunken canoe, which they emptied of its water, and set out down the cañon stream in it, taking the helpless and almost insane white girl with them.

Of the running of the cañon river, Lena Forest had afterward no very clear recollection. That recollection was like the memory of a hideous nightmare. The flying canoe, the water that boiled round the sharp rocks, the black shadows and the blacker cañon tunnel, together with the painted faces and half-naked bodies of her Blackfeet captors, were things and shapes of terror from which she shrank in fright, cowering, and covering her eyes.

Her strength and the temporary heroism she had shown when with her lover had gone. She felt that death was better than this; and once, in her despair, she would have thrown herself into the river, if Red Antelope had not restrained her. He threw her down in the bottom of the canoe, with a cry of warning and anger, and then swung his hatchet menacingly before her terrified eyes.

Lightfoot, wielding the paddle, grunted assent to this threat. In his eyes, a squaw should be made obedient, and fear and threats were good weapons for that purpose. If an Indian squaw was disobedient to her lord and master, she was flogged; and he, without compunction, would have applied a whip to this white girl, if he had thought it necessary. Women were wholly inferior creatures, and they might be stolen as a horse is stolen; and if so stolen, they belonged by right to the one who thus carried them away. It was Indian custom, and to the Indian mind that made it right.

So they gave scant attention to the tears and entreaties and the pitiful terror of the white girl thus dragged into a horrible captivity. Tears did not kill women. In their opinion, tears and crying were good for them; they often made the eyes brighter and washed the dust of the prairie from smooth brown cheeks!

After the passage of the underground river, the canoe shot out into comparatively placid water, with green banks on each side, between which it floated, until soon Blackfeet horsemen were seen, off on the right bank. These horsemen brandished lances and yelled as they came riding wildly toward the canoe.

Lightfoot stood up, waving his paddle, and then his hand.

He was immediately recognized. With a thunder of hoofs, and more yelling, the wild horsemen drew up on the bank as the canoe was shot to land.

Lena Forest, white-faced and fearful, regarded this array of naked warriors with dismay. But her heart was already broken, because of her belief that her lover was dead. If these Indians would only kill her, she would not object, she thought. She feared captivity and Indian cruelty more than she feared death.

The horsemen were a part of Crazy Snake’s band. As for that chief, he was absent, and was said to be gone to get more warriors, with whom to resist the white men in the fight that all believed would now surely come.

Lightfoot, standing up in the canoe, with paddle raised, pointed to the prisoner.

“She is to be the squaw of Crazy Snake!” he said, in order to settle that matter once for all, as he saw a number of the younger warriors regarding her with admiring looks. “Crazy Snake placed her in my charge, to take to the village; and with Red Antelope I have got her thus far.”

In imperfect English he now ordered her to get out of the canoe.

When she did not move quick enough to please him, he caught her by the hair and half dragged her out.

Some of the warriors laughed, as if pleased, when this brutal treatment brought from her a cry of pain.

“We wait here for Crazy Snake,” one of the braves informed Lightfoot. “He was to meet us here with more warriors. What word comes from the white men?”

Lightfoot told them as much as he knew, or as much as he cared to tell them.

There were no lodges here, and but a temporary camping place had been made. The girl prisoner sat on the ground, in the blazing heat of the sun, without shelter.

The warriors gathered around her, some with blankets drawn about their shoulders, but most of them only in war paint and feathers. They were merely disgusting brutes to her. Whatever others might see in them that was picturesque and attractive, she saw none of it. They were of the men who had murdered her father, and had taken her captive, and now held her here in their midst.

But most she thought of the fate of her lover, whose body, as she believed, had been left in that gully in the midst of the burned grasslands.

What the future held for her she shuddered to think, but she knew that death would be preferable to continued captivity with these savages.

The Blackfeet watched the shores of the stream and the cañon a while, and also stationed warriors on the tops of the hills to report the approach of any one. They were waiting the arrival of Crazy Snake.

When he did not come as soon as anticipated, they made hasty preparations for departure, intending to ride farther down the stream to the Indian village. The white prisoner was to be placed there, and there were other reasons which now induced them to make this retreat. So far, no white men had been sighted by them.

Lena Forest had been anxiously hoping to learn that white men were coming, but her hope of that died away when she was placed on the back of a pony and was again borne away.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE WILD RANGE RIDERS.

The men whom old Nick Nomad gathered about him in the town were a wild-looking lot, yet typical of the border, particularly in the old days when Nomad was younger and was noted as one of the most fiery of the frontier Indian fighters.

Luck favored him, for there had come into the town of Crystal Spring, at the base of the mountains, a band of old-time bordermen, hunters, trappers, and wild-horse catchers, with whom he was personally acquainted.

It had been Nomad’s intention to pick up a company of men in the town, merchants, clerks, school teachers, stage drivers, bartenders, gamblers, anything he could get, even though he had small faith in the fighting spirit of a company thus collected.

But that intention was set aside when he saw Lawler and his wild range riders; and when they enrolled under him, as they did as soon as they understood his need and heard his appeal, the confidence of the old trapper rose many degrees.

“Waugh!” he said, seizing the hand of Bill Lawler himself, and shaking it as if it were a pump handle. “This hyar makes me think er ther time me an’ a lot of the boyees give ther Snake River Injuns sech a hustle. Lawler, ’twar Providence, and no mistake, thet sent you hyar now.”

He had fought Indians with Lawler, and had trapped and hunted with him; and this was true of many of the men who had come into Crystal Spring with Lawler.

As has been said, they were a wild-looking lot, as they gathered round old Nick Nomad and heard his story; and they declared their intention of “wiping out” the Blackfeet, if that were necessary. Among their arms, old-fashioned firearms prevailed, together with fringed hunting garments and beaver-skin caps. They carried hatchets and knives, after the Indian fashion, and the horses they rode were small, wiry Indian ponies.

Some of them had been drinking in the saloons, before the old trapper arrived and made his call for volunteers, and these hilarious ones were for riding straight to the Blackfoot village and sweeping it out of existence with fire and pistol.

“No!” said Nomad. “We goes fust thing ter Buffler, and then we does what he says. And I thinks we can’t git ter him any too quick ter please him.”

Night was at hand by the time Nomad had guided these wild range riders to the point where he had left Cody and Pawnee Bill.

Neither was there, and he had hardly expected that either would be. Nevertheless, the fact of their absence made it impossible for Nomad and his company of Indian fighters to push on during the darkness. They did not wish to overrun the scouts, who were supposed to be in advance, and Nomad was anxious to halt there, for the coming of Buffalo Bill.

The range riders sprawled themselves for the night along the edge of the hills, with the cañon river roaring noisily below them.

No fires were built and no lights were shown. Guards were stationed. They were in the Blackfoot country now, and a night surprise was a thing to be watched against. Through the night sentries kept sharp watch; but the night passed without excitement or incident of any kind.

When morning dawned, with no enemy in sight, many of the range riders clamored to be led to the Indian village, which they desired to attack in their wild Bedouin fashion. But old Nomad had been with Buffalo Bill too much to believe that he would approve of a thing of that kind, and he held back the eager rangers.

“Waugh! I’ll take a look round,” he said, “and see what’s ter be seen, and mebbe diskiver what’s best ter be did. I’m lookin’ fer Buffler now ever’ minute. Ef he don’t come, then we’ll move on down ther stream, and try ter hit his trail and foller it.”

He rode away in the gray dawn on Nebuchadnezzar, promising to be back soon.

“I ain’t got no use fer Injuns no more’n they have,” was his thought, “and I’m agreein’ with ’em that ther only good Injun is a dead Injun; but, jes’ ther same, I knows thet Buffler would git hotter’n a limekiln ef I should let them wild men charge ther Blackfeet, as they want ter do. Ef Buffler’s fell inter ther hands of ther cusses, why, then thet’s diff’runt; thet puts ther responsibility and their commandin’ onter me. I reckons ef thet has happened, we’ll be obleeged ter charge ther reds, and wipe ’em out, ’specially if they’ve done any wickedness ter Buffler.”

He passed on down the cañon trail a long distance, looking carefully about, and searching for “sign.”

He saw pony hoofs and moccasin tracks, but they had been made early the day before, he judged, which indicated that the men and horses that had made them were not near.

Yet old Nomad was mistaking and underrating Blackfoot cunning in that; for, as he passed on, scanning the ground and glancing his keen, old eyes along the hills, a number of Blackfeet were watching him.

They were under the leadership of Crazy Snake, as cunning a rascal as had ever crept, serpentlike, through the defiles of those hills.

There was nothing crazy about old Crazy Snake but his name. He was shrewd, cunning, remarkably clear-headed for an Indian, and, altogether, a dangerous redskin. The name had been given him because of his ferocity in a certain battle, when, surrounded by an attacking party of Cree Indians, he had fought his way through and escaped, after killing and wounding many of them; he had fought as if he were a crazy snake, and that was his name ever after.

Crazy Snake was now just back from the trip he had made a number of miles to the northward, having made a headlong ride for the purpose of getting help from the Blackfoot village that lay at the big sink of the Powder River. He had secured the warriors he had gone for, and they were with him, and he was now on his way to the lower village—his own village—where he meant to make a mighty resistance, if the white men came there to attack him.

When he saw, in the trail below, the old trapper jogging along on his old horse, Nebuchadnezzar, he knew from Nomad’s manner that he was searching for some trail, or for Indian “sign.”

Crazy Snake knew, too, that this old trapper was the friend and pard of the wonderful Long Hair, so feared by all the Western Indians.

When he had determined the direction that Nomad would take, Crazy Snake slipped away with several of his best warriors, and hastened to put himself and them in front of the trapper, in an endeavor to ambush him.

Nomad, however, turned around, as if he smelled the trap that was laid for him; and, after jogging along a short distance, disappeared from sight of the Blackfeet.

He had struck a trail that excited his curiosity. It was the plain trail of a white man, and the white man seemed to be wounded, or suffering. The tracks wavered here and there.

“Got an Injun arrer in him, I’m guessin’,” was Nomad’s opinion. “’Tain’t Buffler’s trail, ner Pawnee’s; and I dunno who it kin be. But whoever he aire, he aire white; and I’ll see what’s the meanin’ of it.”

The trail was fresh and plain, and he followed it rapidly.

It did not take him long to come in sight of a small hut half hidden under a projecting ledge. The door was open, and the wavering trail led through the grass straight up to it.

“Some fool miner’s camped down hyar, and didn’t know thet ther cussed Blackfeet aire threatenin’ all white men’s ha’r!” was Nomad’s conclusion, as he left the trail, dismounted, and then approached the house carefully from the rear, looking into the hut through the one small rear window.

A man lay on the floor by the door, seeming to have fallen there through sheer weakness.

Nomad immediately went around to the door.

“Hello!” he said, stepping within. “Got some Injun lead in ye?” His tone changed to astonishment. “Bill Givens!” he cried. “Waugh! Ole pard, what’s ther meanin’ o’ this?”

The meaning of it was that Bill Givens, an old acquaintance of Nomad’s, was ill of measles, and in a dangerous condition. He had got home, and tried to get into the house and on his bed, but had fallen on the floor.

Nomad knew what the trouble was as soon as he looked in Givens’ splotched and fevered face; but he had no fear of measles; and, picking Givens up, he put him on the narrow bed, and then tried to do something for him to make him comfortable.

“Been ground-hoggin’ out hyar by yerself, eh? Tryin’ ter git some of the yaller gold thet everybody ’lows these hyar hills aire sloppin’ over with, eh? Waugh! You’d ought to ’a’ got out o’ this ’fore ther measles hit ye, fer ther Blackfeet aire thick as flies round hyar, and aire likely ter make trouble.”

He was puzzled as to what he should do.

When he had worked over Givens a while, and had poured some hot water down his throat, water heated in the tiny fireplace, Givens came, in a measure, to himself.

He knew that Blackfeet were around in that locality, and now, seeing and recognizing his old trapper pard, he begged Nomad to take him down to the town, or at least away from the cabin so surrounded by Indian perils.

“It’s resky, but not so resky as you stayin’ hyar, even if somebody stayed hyar with ye, Givens,” said Nomad. “I reckon I kin help ye stick ter ther back of my ole hoss, and we’ll git ye back to whar ther rangers aire waitin’, and then have some of ’em stay by ye, er git ye to ther town. I never deserts an ole pard, Givens, and I’ll not desert you.”

Nomad got Nebuchadnezzar, and with some difficulty helped the sick man to mount to the horse’s back. Then he took the rein, and, with Givens swaying weakly in the saddle, he set out with him, striking the backward trail and hurrying on toward the camp of the rangers.

Meanwhile, Crazy Snake had not been inactive; he had drawn his cordon of Blackfeet warriors and descended into the trail.

Suddenly rifle shots rang out and bowstrings twanged.

Givens fell, with a bullet in his brain, tumbling heavily to the ground.

Bullets cut through Nomad’s clothing, and an arrow struck and stuck in his beaver-skin cap, its feathered end projecting from the fur, forming a strange-looking plume.

Nomad tried to turn Nebuchadnezzar around in the trail, but the Blackfoot rush was made too quickly; and, though he went down fighting, he was subdued, and made a prisoner, being beaten to the earth before he submitted.

Nebuchadnezzar pawed and squealed, rushed on the Blackfeet with his greenish teeth clicking and snapping, and lunged out with his twinkling heels; but Nebuchadnezzar, too, was made a prisoner.

Nomad’s effort to aid a needy friend had made him a prisoner of the Blackfeet.

CHAPTER XXVII. AGAIN ON THE TRAIL.

Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill floated on down the cañon river until they came to the open land beyond the “tunnel,” where they discovered indications that Blackfeet had been on the shores there not long before.

This made them wary; they could not be sure that all the Blackfeet were gone. Accordingly, they concealed their canoe, and searched the ground along the shore.

Bruce Clayton was with them, using his eyes as well as he could, but unable to “read” what he saw on the ground, seeing but hoof marks of horses, and some moccasin tracks in the damp soil by the margin of the river.

“They have retreated toward the village,” said Buffalo Bill. “Their village lies farther down the stream, and they have gone in that direction. The girl was taken with them, evidently.”

Clayton wanted to hurry on and do something at once to rescue her, but the wary scouts were not sure this was wise. They feared ambushes, and knew, also, that they were not in force strong enough to take the girl from the village. Whatever they did they must do by craft.

Aside from this, Buffalo Bill was expecting soon the coming of old Nick Nomad, who had gone for assistance.

He now sent Pawnee Bill back to meet Nomad’s force and guide it on, and, with the anxious young lover, he began to follow the trail of the Blackfeet.

Avoiding all ambushes and pitfalls, but making slow progress, the scout and his young friend reached the vicinity of the Blackfoot village by the middle of the afternoon.

From a hillside some distance away the scout surveyed it with his glasses, and saw that the village was in a state of commotion.

“Impossible to do anything right now,” was his conclusion. “The warriors we’ve been following are there, and the village is aroused and is being put in readiness for a fight. It would be as much as our lives are worth if we should try to penetrate it now. We’ll have to await the coming of Nomad, and whatever help he has got together.”

“Perhaps I could go in after dark,” said young Clayton rashly.

“We’ll see,” was the answer. “Nomad may get here by, or before, that time.”

But Nomad did not come.

When darkness had settled over the earth the scout tried to enter the village, but was driven back by the keen-nosed dogs, that swarmed everywhere, watchful and hungry as wolves.

“If only we could get some word to her!” said Clayton. “If we could let her know that friends are near, it would encourage her.”

“My attempt kicked up a good deal of excitement. She may guess from that that friends are near. We’ll hope so.”

“But if only some direct word could be got to her!”

Clayton’s anxiety increased as the hours went by.

“If you can’t sleep, my boy,” said the scout after a while, “keep close watch while I take a try at it. I’ll be better to-morrow for a little rest to-night.”

“You don’t intend to attempt again to-night to reach her?” said Clayton.

“It’s impossible to do anything to-night, my dear fellow; the Blackfeet are too much excited and too wide-awake.”

When Buffalo Bill awoke, less than an hour later, Bruce Clayton was gone.

“The fool!” he said. “He’s certain to be captured, if he tries to get into the village.”

He rose and went again toward the village, filled with fear for his friend’s safety. He sympathized with Clayton’s anxiety to do something for the girl who was held by the Blackfeet, but at the same time blamed him for folly and disobedience of orders.

He had not gone far when wild yells and a noisy clamor told him that Clayton had been captured.

The scout stood still, listening to those telltale sounds.

“Just as I feared,” he thought. “It will be a wonder if they don’t kill him; and what good will his recklessness then do the girl?”

He moved on with quick steps, being guided by the wild clamor and by the flashing of lodge fires that were being rebuilt, or blown into new life.

Drums were soon booming in the council lodge, warriors were seen hurrying to and fro by the light of the fires, and feverish activity reigned.

The Blackfeet, having captured the young white man, were sure that he was a scout, and that a strong force of white men were near; and they were getting ready to meet them if they came.

The utter impossibility of entering the village without discovery was apparent to the experienced scout. Though he wanted to aid the youth, and also the girl, he saw that the attempt would have small chance of success, and if it failed his own fate would, no doubt, be sealed. Yet it required stern self-repression to remain inactive, knowing what was going on so near him, and the peril of the prisoners.

As Buffalo Bill lay close against the ground, screened by the darkness, he saw small bodies of Blackfeet leave the village, and knew they had been sent out to scout about, and, if possible, to locate the white men who were supposed to be near.

In going and coming these Blackfeet passed close to the scout; so close that he could hear some of their low-spoken words and the soft crunching of their moccasins. From what they said he discovered that Crazy Snake was not in the village, but was expected soon, and that the prisoners were being held until his coming.

“That’s good!” was his thought. “Crazy Snake wants the girl for his squaw, and these bloodthirsty rascals believe that he will give up Clayton to the torture as soon as he arrives. Before that time comes perhaps I can do something.”

He slipped away from the village, and soon was hastening over the backward way, hoping to get in communication now with Nomad’s men and hurry them forward, and also eager to find Pawnee Bill.

However, he discovered that parties of Blackfeet were coming and going in the trail, and to avoid running into them he left it and entered the hills. This slowed his progress, and morning dawned before he had gone very far. Then, as he went on, he was given a crushing surprise.

He saw old Nomad, mounted on Nebuchadnezzar, in the midst of a body of Blackfeet commanded by Crazy Snake.

“Nomad a prisoner!” he said, with a groan. “What in blazes will happen next?”

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CAPTURE OF THE MEDICINE MAN.

Unable to do anything to aid Nomad, who was surrounded by a strong body of warriors, Buffalo Bill continued his retreat toward the point where he hoped to, at least, find Pawnee Bill.

That sight of Nomad borne away by the redskins inclined him to think that the trapper had failed in his effort to get fighting men from the town.

But when he found Pawnee Bill, he found also the wild range riders whom Nomad had led into the hills. They had met Pawnee Bill, and had been waiting Nomad’s return, unaware that he had fallen into the hands of the Indians.

They greeted the noted scout with cheers. He was known personally to most of them, and by reputation to all. But their cheers changed to angry calls for vengeance when they learned what had befallen Nomad; and they asked the scout to lead them toward the village at once.

Buffalo Bill was pleased with the force that had been rallied by Nomad. As fighting men, they were the best of the border; and he believed they would be able to whip the Blackfeet even in a stand-up fight.

But the result to the prisoners was a thing that had to be taken into consideration.

If the Blackfeet were defeated in an open battle and driven back, the surviving remnant would seek shelter in the mountains. But before retreating they would, without doubt, slay their white prisoners. Victory at such a cost of human life would be purchased all too dearly.

Nevertheless, Buffalo Bill now set himself at the head of the rangers, and led them at as rapid a pace as was safe in the direction of the Blackfoot village.

Lawler, the commander of the rangers, rode at the scout’s side, and so did Pawnee Bill.

As they went, they discussed the situation with reference to the safety of the prisoners, and agreed that by some strategy they should be reached and rescued, if possible. How the thing was to be done was the puzzle.

As the village was approached the rangers slowed their pace, and the two noted scouts were sent ahead.

They separated when in the hills overhanging the village, going in different directions, on the watch for Indian spies, and trying to ascertain the state of affairs.

When he had gone some distance Buffalo Bill dismounted and descended on foot a few yards, to where a slight rise offered a better view. He had got his field glasses and was preparing for a careful study of conditions in the village when he was aroused by a sound from his horse and by a sudden patter of moccasined feet. Turning about, he saw an Indian warrior running to get the horse.

Buffalo Bill did not wish to shoot the brave, lest the report of the shot should carry too far; so he rushed at the redskin.

The latter tried to leap to the back of the horse, but succeeded only in dislodging the scout’s rifle, which hung by its strap to the high pommel.

The horse reared, shaking off the Indian, and the Indian, seeing that he was in danger, turned about. He slipped and fell in his haste, dropping his shield of buffalo hide, but retaining his lance; and then he sprang away.

Buffalo Bill reached his horse, cut the lariat, bounded into the saddle, and gave chase, almost weaponless, though he had caught up the shield, which the redskin had dropped.

As he thus gave chase, the Blackfoot stood at bay, and when the scout tried to ride him down he hurled the lance straight at the scout’s broad breast.

Buffalo Bill dodged, and caught the Indian’s lance on the shield; otherwise, it would have gone through his body. But he rode the horse right over the warrior, and, lunging at him from the saddle, he caught the redskin by the throat, when both came to the ground together, the scout on top.

The fight that followed was furious and desperate, but of brief duration. When it ended, Buffalo Bill was the victor, and the Blackfoot brave lay panting on his back, the scout’s fingers clutching him by the throat.

The red warrior gurgled something which he meant as a word of submission and surrender, but the scout still held him in that choking grasp, not daring to trust him; and then, before the brave could get back enough strength to resist, the scout had him bound tight and fast.

When the Blackfoot recovered sufficiently to talk, Buffalo Bill began to ask him questions, emphasizing them by a pointed revolver.

The warrior was sullen at first; but by and by he declared that his name was Spotted Deer, and that he was a subchief, who had been sent out there to meet and guide into the village a certain medicine man from another village, who was coming to drive away the evil spirits that were causing the Blackfeet to fall sick and die. In other words, this medicine man had been sent for in the belief that he could charm away the measles that had attacked so many of the Indians.

“I think I want to meet that medicine man,” said the scout to himself, when he had heard the story. Therefore, he went into hiding, with his prisoner bound and gagged, his horse concealed some distance away, and waited with as much patience as he could for the appearance of the medicine man.

As he thus waited, he shaped the plan that had come to his fertile mind—a plan that promised aid to the imperiled prisoners.

Within less than an hour the medicine man came in sight, advancing down the trail that here descended from the higher mountains.

Spotted Deer, though bound and gagged, struggled and gurgled, in an effort to warn the medicine man of the danger he was in, and he threw himself about in such a manner, in spite of the scout’s warnings to him to desist, that he attracted the medicine man’s attention. Yet the result of his strenuous efforts was not what he had hoped.

The medicine man turned toward the bushes where he beheld the commotion, stepping with Indian lightness of foot, and when he parted the bushes to look in, he found himself looking into the deadly tube of a revolver, with the dreaded Long Hair behind it threatening him.

“Do not try to turn!” the scout commanded in Blackfoot; “for, if you do, I shall shoot you.”

The medicine man surrendered without a word, seeing that death would be the result if he refused. Then he discovered the bound form of Spotted Deer.

Buffalo Bill kept him covered with the revolver, and with Indian stoicism the medicine man sat down.

“Now, your knife!” commanded the scout.

The Blackfoot produced the weapon and placed it on the ground. His hatchet was the only other weapon he possessed, and that he also surrendered.

Then the scout searched him.

Under his blanket the medicine man had what may be called the tools of his trade—his medicine rattle and drum, pigments and paints of various kinds, his medicine bag, together with plumes, beadwork, and other adornments.

When he had possessed himself of these, Buffalo Bill tied the medicine man, and bound him to the other captured Blackfoot. Then he tied to the saddle on the back of the horse the articles taken from the medicine man, and, leading his horse, he drove the two Indians before him along the trail in the direction from which he had come.

An hour later Buffalo Bill reached the wild range riders, without mishap, with his prisoners and spoil, finding that Pawnee Bill had not yet appeared.

But Pawnee Bill came in soon, while the scout was explaining and elaborating the plan he had conceived for the relief of the white prisoners of the Blackfeet.

It was so daring, however, that when Pawnee Bill heard it even he opposed it; for the plan was nothing less than that Buffalo Bill should paint and disguise himself and enter the Blackfoot village, pretending to be the medicine man whom the Indians were expecting.

But when Buffalo Bill had painted himself with the paints taken from the medicine man, had arranged his hair in the Indian fashion and ornamented it with plumes, had put on the clothing of the medicine man, wrapped himself in the medicine man’s blanket and robes, and arrayed himself, with tom-tom, medicine rattle, and other articles, even Pawnee Bill’s skepticism vanished.

“It almost frightens me to look at you now, Cody,” he said, with a laugh. “If you can get into the village in the night rigged out in that way, I think you can fool even old Crazy Snake himself. But we shall stand ready to rush the village if anything happens to you. Give us the signal—two wolf howls from the village—and we’ll charge the redskins, whatever the cost.”

The range riders were as enthusiastic as Pawnee Bill had now become, and though they were themselves somewhat experienced in such trickery, they marveled at the skill shown by Buffalo Bill in this transformation.

With the approach of night the range riders advanced toward the village, with scouts out in front to guard against surprise and ambush. But they stopped in the hills above the village.

Then, as night came on, dark and cloudy, Buffalo Bill descended from the hills. He knew the terrible danger to which he was now to expose himself—that he was taking his life in his hands. Yet he did not hesitate at this call of duty.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE COMING OF THE MEDICINE MAN.

Lena Forest’s position in the Blackfoot village could hardly have been worse, for the malignity of two jealous Indian women was turned against her in every possible way to make her suffer.

These two women were Wind Flower and Wide Foot, the wife of Crazy Snake. Wide Foot had been told that Crazy Snake, her lord and master, was to install the new white squaw soon in his lodge, and that was enough to fill her heart with bitter enmity against the inoffensive white girl.

As for Wind Flower, she could not rid herself of the belief that Lightfoot, the handsome young chief who had promised to marry her, was stricken with the charms of the white girl prisoner. And as Lightfoot would probably be made head chief in the event of the death of Crazy Snake, Wind Flower saw herself at some future time dispossessed, as Wide Foot seemed about to be now.

Lena Forest had been placed in Crazy Snake’s lodge in charge of Wide Foot, who was ordered to care for her, and to see that she did not escape; and this Wide Foot was commanded to do on peril of her own life.

Though fear of Crazy Snake, whose anger was a thing to be dreaded, was enough to keep Wide Foot from doing the white girl harm of a serious character, it did not prevent her from annoying the prisoner in many ways.

At times both Wide Foot and Wind Flower would sit in the lodge entrance and make sport of the prisoner, grimacing, giggling at her, making faces at her, even spitting at her, to show their hatred and detestation.

Wide Foot even refused to give her food and water, withholding them until the white girl was fairly famished.

When Bruce Clayton was captured by the Blackfeet and brought into the village, Lena Forest’s prison-keeper tried to prevent her from knowing it. But the knowledge could not be long withheld. The Blackfeet were altogether too jubilant over the capture, and made too great a noise about it.

Lena Forest discovered that a prisoner had been brought in. When she tried to get out of the lodge, and was thrown back by Wide Foot, and then heard Bruce’s loud voice raised in anger at some insult, she hurled Wide Foot aside, and dashed out of the lodge.

She saw her lover seated on a horse, to which he was tied, with a band of howling redskins round him, composed, in large part, of frantic women and children.

But for a guard of warriors the angry squaws would have pulled Clayton from the horse and hacked him to pieces with knives.

Lena Forest tried to reach Bruce, hardly knowing what she did; for this sudden discovery that he was not really dead, but that he, too, was a Blackfoot prisoner, nerved her to the highest pitch of excitement and recklessness. She had no thought of what she would do, or could do, if she gained his side; but was only possessed by an insane desire to get to him, and die with him, if she could do nothing else.

Wide Foot took savage delight in seizing her and dragging her by the hair back into the lodge. But the despondent girl had come to the knowledge that her lover was alive, when she had thought him dead, and the cruelty and abuse of the frenzied old woman made little impression on her now.

True, she feared now for Bruce’s life; yet while there is life there is hope, and that he had been spared thus far gave glimmerings of hope for the future.

When the old trapper, Nick Nomad, was brought into the village there was further wild commotion among the Blackfeet, of which the girl prisoner could not fail to have knowledge.

She was sure that Bruce still lived, and was held in some of the lodges.

She saw the trapper on his rawboned horse, as he was conducted past the lodge entrance in a sort of triumphal entry made by Crazy Snake himself; and from the shouts she knew that some big chief had arrived and guessed it was Crazy Snake. Then she saw Crazy Snake, and was sure of this.

Throughout the remaining hours, until darkness came, the girl prisoner tried to think of some means by which she might release herself and the other prisoners.

The wariness of the old squaw had increased since the coming of Crazy Snake. No more did Wide Foot beat and abuse the captive, a thing she feared to do now, lest the vengeance of Crazy Snake should descend on her.

Lena Forest listened to the thumping of the drums in the council lodge, and to the fervid oratory of the warriors after nightfall. She knew that things of importance were being discussed in that big lodge, yet she could tell nothing of what was being said, even though much of the talk reached her ears, for she knew not a word of the language. Held close now under the eyes of the old squaw, the girl crouched in the half-lighted prison lodge, listening to this commotion.

Dogs barked, and papooses and squaws talked in the midst of the lodges. Warriors hurried to and fro, and Lena believed that scouts and spies were passing in and out of the village.

All of this made her think that perhaps white men were near, whom the Indians feared; and she thought of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, for whose coming she now prayed.

But when at length Buffalo Bill came she had no thought that he was a white man.

The daring scout had made his entrance into the village in the most natural way, riding into it on the back of an Indian pony, arrayed in a medicine robe and blanket, painted until his features were concealed, and with his mustache and imperial hidden beneath the folds of the blanket which he kept muffled up around his chin.

Only the upper part of his face, wonderfully striped with paint, his feathered hair, and his eyes could be seen.

He announced his presence, before entering, by a series of wild yells, and a rattle of his medicine drum; and when the Blackfeet swarmed forth to meet him, he told them briefly, and in well-chosen Blackfoot words, that he was the medicine man who had been asked to come to conjure away the demons that were making the Blackfeet fall ill and die.

Peril of the most deadly sort confronted him instantly, for Crazy Snake stepped forth, and, looking keenly at him, said:

“This is not Wandering Bear, the great medicine man of the Blackfeet of the Sunken Lands?”

But Buffalo Bill was ready even for that.

“I am Whispering Elk, the Blackfoot medicine man from the far North,” he answered. “Wandering Bear has gone to the Blackfeet of the Sagebrush Valley, where there is much sickness, and I come in his stead.”

Crazy Snake, shrewd as he was, did not doubt that this was an Indian medicine man; but he had met Wandering Bear, and this man did not resemble him.

Buffalo Bill, on his Indian pony, was conducted toward the council lodge. Before it was reached, he was asked to stop at a lodge and cure a warrior stricken with measles.

While not believing that he could do anything more, perhaps, than give the stricken warrior hope, the scout descended carefully from the pony and entered the lodge.

The Indian braves, the women and children, and even the suspicious sniffing dogs came close at his heels, filling the lodge which he entered.

The sick man, his face lighted by the leaping fire of the lodge, which had been stirred into new life, looked appealingly at the supposed medicine man.

For a minute, in the midst of a great silence, Buffalo Bill postured before the sick man. Then, with a quick motion, and some shouted words, he stooped and drew from under the skins that covered the sick man the stuffed skin of a weasel, which he had concealed under his robe. This he threw on the ground with a yell, and then beat and tore it into fragments, casting the fragments into the fire, that the Blackfeet might not too closely inspect them.

The Blackfeet yelled in hoarse joy and triumph when they beheld what they believed to be the body of the evil spirit, taking the shape of a weasel, that had vexed and sickened the warrior.

The warrior’s face glowed and his eyes brightened; and there was a certainty that, believing now he would get well, much of the battle against the disease had been already won by him.

As the scout came out of this lodge the girl prisoner, Lena Forest, saw him again; but he was still to her but a medicine man, a horrid and horrible creature, worse even than the hideous Indians who had surrounded her so much of late. She saw him go on toward the council lodge, and heard there the renewed beating of drums, and a repetition of the sounds of Indian oratory.

Buffalo Bill, in thus desperately entering the Blackfoot village, hoped to locate the prisoners, and, later in the night, release them. If he was discovered, his own life would be the forfeit, he felt sure.

The risk was great, but the thing to be gained was great, for it was no less than the release of old Nomad and the other prisoners, thus saving their lives; for he was certain they would be slain by the Blackfeet, if the latter were forced to retreat by an attack of the range riders.

In the council lodge Buffalo Bill tried to conduct himself like a true medicine man. He yelled and danced, and besought the good spirits of the mountains to descend and assist him in driving out the evil spirits that were vexing the Blackfeet. But he did not dare talk too much, and much of his eloquence took the shape of pantomime, in which he used wonderful gestures, always keeping the folds of the blanket over the lower part of his face—which gave him an additional air of mystery to the frenzied Indians.

He discovered that one thing the Blackfeet were anxious about was that he should confer on them some power, by a spell or charm, that would enable them to resist the bullets of the white men, whom they feared.

The scout gave them whatever assurances they desired, feeling that he could not safely do otherwise.

Finally he left the council lodge, declaring that the spirits had told him that, concealed in some of the lodges, were little demons, hid under buffalo robes, and even in the earth, who were working much evil, and he must find and destroy them.

His object, of course, was to pass from lodge to lodge, in order to locate the prisoners, and if possible communicate to them knowledge of the thing he was trying to do.

The warriors streamed after him, and behind the warriors came the women and children, while the barking and sniffing dogs ran everywhere, yelping and snarling.

It did not take Buffalo Bill long to find out that Nomad and young Clayton were held together in a lodge near the medicine lodge.

“Now, if I can locate the girl,” he said to himself.

The braves were crowding round him, and he dared not say a word in English which would let Nomad and Clayton know who he was, and his disguise and his acting were so good that they did not recognize him. But he contrived to make himself known to old Nomad by a few words of Spanish, and he saw the old man stare in confusion and astonishment.

In a little while he found Lena Forest, crouching in the lodge where she had been held from the first.

At the entrance to this lodge stood old Wide Foot, who fell back when the terrible medicine man appeared before her.

Lena Forest started up, frightened by the entrance of the medicine man.

Not daring to use English, the scout said a few words in Spanish, wondering if she would understand. She uttered a cry of amazement, for she understood him—a cry which was fairly forced from her by her wild astonishment.

Buffalo Bill poked and peered, said a few words more to her in Spanish, the Indians thinking them words of invocation which they could not be expected to understand, and then he retreated.

As he did so, coming thus out of the lodge, he heard wild yells, and a rushing of feet. And then before him, bounding along, his eyes blazing and his whole being wrought to a frenzy, he saw the medicine man whom he had captured, and whom he was impersonating.

With yells of rage the medicine man rushed upon him, denouncing him, and screaming to the warriors that this was a white man, and must be beaten down and captured; that he was the terrible Long Hair himself!

It was like the explosion of a mine of gunpowder. Instantly, a dozen warriors sprang at Buffalo Bill, tearing the blanket from his shoulders, and yelling with rage as their enemy stood revealed.

CHAPTER XXX. THE DEFEAT OF THE BLACKFEET.

Wandering Bear, the medicine man captured by Buffalo Bill, was a shrewd old scoundrel, gifted not only with many natural qualities, but some acquired ones, for the part he played as medicine man of the Blackfeet.

Like most, if not all, medicine men among savage peoples, he resorted to tricks, some of them very clever; and one of his tricks was akin to that shown on many a theatrical stage to-day, the getting out of tightly set cords bound about his wrists and ankles.

For a long time after darkness fell, old Wandering Bear lay twisting quietly at the cords that held him.

He had seen Buffalo Bill paint and decorate himself and depart, and he guessed shrewdly what that meant.

Also he saw that the white rangers were close down to the village, in the scrub that covered the sides of the hills, and he was sure that an attack on the village was contemplated, and that the departure of the pretended medicine man had something to do with it and could mean nothing but harm to the Blackfeet.

He thought most of himself and his personal peril, as was but natural. What these white men would do to him eventually he did not know, but he anticipated nothing less than death. As for the other Blackfoot, the one who had come to meet him and had been captured by Buffalo Bill, Wandering Bear paid slight attention to him; his own safety was the thing for which he longed and now worked.

At last the cords on his wrists fell away, and by some clever twisting he got his hands down to his ankles and untied the cords that held them.

After thus releasing himself, he lay a while, stretching his arms and legs, to get them in condition. Then suddenly he bounded to his feet with a startling yell, knocked over the ranger who stood close by him, and was gone like a shot out of a gun.

The rangers did not even fire a shot at him, for they did not wish to announce to the Blackfeet below that they were so close to the village. Yet they pursued the escaping medicine man, a pursuit that was hopeless from the first.

He disappeared, to appear in the Blackfoot village, leaping on and denouncing Buffalo Bill, to the amazement of the Blackfeet who heard and saw him.

Buffalo Bill knew that the game was up. If he escaped with his life he would have to move quickly, and do something desperate.

Instantly two wolf howls rose on the startled air, floating out to the wild range riders in the near-by hills. Then the scout struck down the medicine man, who was trying to seize him, and darted into the lodge of Crazy Snake.

Lena Forest was in there, and at the entrance was Wide Foot.

The intruder hurled the old hag sprawling; then caught the girl by the hand and jumped to the rear of the lodge. His knife flashed, and a tearing sound followed, as he ripped the lodge skin from top to bottom, opening a way through.

“Come!” he said, and he pulled the girl along, while the howls of the Indians rose in a very pandemonium.

By diving thus through the lodge Buffalo Bill gained a slight start of his foes, but it was only enough to enable him to get out of the lodge and run toward the shadows of the next one, for the angry Blackfeet came swarming around the lodge and through it, yelling for his life.

He shaped his course toward the lodge where Nomad and Clayton were held, and gained it a few yards in advance of his pursuers. Here he thrust the knife into the hands of the startled and wildly excited girl.

“They’re in there,” he said; “release them while I hold back the Indians. Jump lively!”

She rushed into the lodge with the knife, the Indian who had been guarding it having deserted his post.

Buffalo Bill stepped into the entrance; and, turning about there, he drew his revolver and shot down the foremost of the oncoming redskins.

As the reports of his revolver broke forth, from the hills came the wild, charging cheers of the range riders, who had heard and were now answering the wolf howls.

The charging cheers of the rangers and his own revolver fire checked the advance of the enraged Blackfeet. Lena Forest was thus given time in which to release old Nomad and her lover.

They came to the lodge entrance hurriedly, putting themselves by the side of the scout.

“If we had weepons, Buffler!” old Nomad panted, “we’d lay out a few of them howlin’ red devils!”

Clayton was too astounded to speak; but he caught the girl in his arms and seemed resolved to shield her by placing his body between her and the angry Blackfeet.

Buffalo Bill reached under his blanket, and, pulling out a loaded revolver, passed it to Nomad, who received it with a yell of joy.

“Waugh! Buffler, we stand tergether and we go down tergether. Whoop!”

The startled Blackfeet were not given much time in which to rally, for already the thunder of the pony hoofs of the charging range riders was heard beyond the village. Then the wild riders were in the very village itself, shooting and yelling, and the Blackfeet were in flight.

Short and sharp was that surprise and that battle.

The Blackfeet who were not killed or captured fled to the hills for refuge. However, numbers of them were captured, and the village was given to the flames.

Old Crazy Snake escaped, with his principal warriors, among them the handsome young chief, Lightfoot, and the crafty medicine man, Wandering Bear.

A week later Crazy Snake sent down a piteous petition, assuring the white men that he was their good friend, that he had always been their good friend, and would be their good friend forever, if they would but stop chasing him in the mountains.

Thus ended the Blackfoot uprising, and no more the bloody arrow, the mark of Crazy Snake’s vengeance, gleamed red on the bosoms of men murdered by that treacherous old chieftain. He had been soundly whipped; and a whipped Indian can be the meekest creature on the earth.

CHAPTER XXXI. RINGED IN BY FIRE.

Nevertheless, in spite of this welcome lull after the storm, Major Clendenning was determined to take no chances of a minor outbreak on the part of the surviving members of the Blackfoot band. He had learned from Buffalo Bill something of the haughty nature and indomitable ambition of the younger chief, Lightfoot; and he had good reason to fear that the Blackfeet would not long remain in their refuge among the hills. Whether they would again molest the whites, particularly the miners, or confine their hostile attentions to their constant foes, the Crees, was an open question, and Major Clendenning felt certain that the great scout could solve it. He, therefore, dispatched Buffalo Bill to the territory formerly occupied by Crazy Snake’s tribe, with instructions to find out as much as possible.

Having left Lena Forest in charge of the kindly wife of one of the officers at the fort, and having said farewell to Pawnee Bill, old Nomad, and Bruce Clayton—who promised Lena that he would ride over to the fort as often as he possibly could, and that he would work hard and save enough money for them to be married—Buffalo Bill mounted and rode forth to new adventures, in which his friends were destined to share.

He shaped his course directly toward the high hills, and on the evening of the third day of his journey he found himself entering a thick forest of scrub oaks and pines. As the shadows of night were deepening, he decided to camp in a favorable spot; so he tethered his horse, climbed farther up the mountain, spread a blanket on the ground, and, carefully building a small fire, cooked his frugal meal. After that, he dozed peacefully and soon fell into profound slumber.

When he awoke in the morning he was startled by the smell of burning pine needles and the sight of clouds of smoke drifting between the trees. The ground was a solid carpet of pine needles, inches deep, and this was now a carpet of flame. The fire climbed the trees, throwing out red banners, wrapping the straight pines in roaring fire.

In front of the scout was the edge of a precipice overhanging the Bitter Water that here cut through the solid rock of its deep cañon chasm.

Yet sheer as was that precipice, and far down as were the waters of the little river, Buffalo Bill seemed almost on the point of leaping down.

The mountain was steep, and he had left his horse near its base, climbing himself to the rugged spot where he now stood. He was trapped. Where he stood there was a narrow space of rock, on the edge of the precipice; in front of him a small space of needle-covered ground still untouched by fire; and beyond that a very furnace of flame and smoke. The roar of the fire was terrifying of itself, and now and then the fall of a burned tree trunk thundered through it, like the crash of a cannon shot.

“My own fault, too!” he said, as he looked about, searching vainly for some avenue of escape. “I don’t know that I slept so soundly that the fire got such a start as that. I suppose I must have thought it the roar of the river.”

But Buffalo Bill could not be quite sure that all the fault was with himself. For, who had started the fire? He had deadly enemies in that country, men who would have roasted him there as coolly as they would have roasted a plucked partridge.

But Buffalo Bill was not really troubling his mind so much about the origin of the fire as how he could escape from it. He ran along the edge of the precipice, looking down.

The lariat that might have helped him he had left on the saddle, with the horse.

Twenty feet below him, on the side of the precipice, was a ledge; but he could not get down to it, for the wall above it was as smooth as a board, and glassy in its slipperiness. To jump down to that ledge would be the same as deliberately committing suicide; for the ledge was narrow, and the drop sheer, so that he would only have bounded, or fallen, on down into the black cañon, if he had tried it. He could see the white water roaring and racing far below; and could even see other ledges and shelves that he might reach if he could only get down to that first one.

Seeing that he could not climb down the sheer wall, he turned, and again faced the fire.

Even in the few brief moments spent in inspecting the ledge, the fire had gained in a startling way, and was now much closer and much hotter than before. It roared and glowed in a big semicircle, the two ends of the semicircle resting on the rim of the precipice and traveling fast toward him. That he would be roasted alive if he remained admitted of not a doubt; as even now, at the distance, the heat of the fire was almost unbearable.

A strange look, perhaps never before seen on the face of the indomitable scout, came to it, and he took out his revolver. For the instant he felt that he preferred to shoot himself rather than to suffer the tortures of a living death by fire. But he shook his head, thrust back the revolver, and turned again to the rim of the precipice.

“Perhaps I could tear up my clothes and make a rope that would reach part way to the ledge, and I could drop the rest of the distance,” was his thought. “I’ll try it; for I’ll die here if I don’t, and I’d prefer to die trying to do something.”

He was about to strip off his coat, when a shout reached him. It came so suddenly and unexpectedly that it made his heart jump.

“Yes?” he yelled, springing to the edge of the chasm and looking about. He did not see any one. “Where are you?” he called, his heart jumping with excitement and new hope.

“Here!” The voice had a singular sound, shrill and feminine.

He ran along the edge of the chasm, looking down, for it seemed to come from below; and again he shouted an inquiry.

Then he saw the figure of a young woman, who was on one of the ledges below him, and was trying to ascend the steep side of the chasm. She had a rope, which she had flung up, with its noose hooked over a projection.

“I’m coming!” she cried confidently, and began to climb the rope.

Her slight body swung and swayed over the dizzy chasm as she began to climb. Slowly ascending, sometimes she slipped back, with a motion that made him think she was falling and brought his heart into his mouth.

He did not clearly see her face now, and he had not secured a very good view of it, but he felt sure he knew who the young woman was.

With much difficulty, the girl climbed the rope and drew herself upon the ledge to which the noose held. She looked up, and then he saw her face clearly—the face of Lena Forest. Yet it seemed impossible she could be there, as he had believed she was safe at the fort.

While the plucky girl was thus climbing the face of the dizzy precipice, the fire was raging with wild fury, as if it knew that help was coming to the scout and it was determined to overwhelm him before that help could arrive. The increasing heat almost blistered his face and hands now, and it drove him to the very edge of the precipice, over which he soon was hanging, to escape it.

With a heroism that was beyond praise, Lena continued to mount, from ledge to ledge, throwing up the rope and catching it on projections, and then climbing up to the projections. At length she gained the ledge below the scout.

When she looked up now he saw that she was on the point of exhaustion. Her face was pale, and her eyes were big and bright. Her breath came in gasps, as she stood up for the last cast of the rope.

“Catch it!” she said, then the rope shot from her hand, and the noose was caught by the scout.

With a turn, he looped the noose over a point of the rock by him, and the next instant he was sliding down the rope. It was like a rescue from the very jaws of death.

When Buffalo Bill gained the ledge, he found Lena Forest lying there, almost in a faint, from sheer exhaustion and intense excitement.

“Thank Heaven, I was in time!” she said, in a tremulous voice, when she saw he had reached the ledge.

“Yes!” he echoed. “I can never thank you enough for that. It saved me from an awful fate, though we’re not entirely secure here.”

“No, but you’re safe from the fire.”

“Yes, I think so.”

He looked down at the ledges still below him. The noose of the rope was on the rock point above, and he had no rope now with which to make a further descent. How he was ever to get down into the cañon without a rope he did not know.

“We’ll hope the fire won’t trouble the noose up there,” he said to her; “and, if it doesn’t, when the fire dies down we can climb up the rope and get out above. It seems impossible to descend into the cañon.”

“It seems to me I can never climb another yard,” Lena declared, so thoroughly fatigued that she was almost crying.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE GIRL AND THE EMERALDS.

The fire roared on the pine levels overhead, and the girl and the scout whom she had rescued from the fire talked.

They had much to talk about beyond the fact that she had saved the scout, and the inevitable discussion as to how they were to get off the ledge where they now were.

“Lena,” he said finally, and his tone showed hesitation, “I suppose you are strong enough to hear unpleasant news?”

Her face, already pale, grew paler.

“My uncle?” she gasped. “Something has happened to him!”

The scout put his hand into an inner pocket and brought out a filled buckskin bag.

“He asked me to send, or get, this to you.”

She looked at him, trembling.

“He—he is not dead?”

“Yes, Lena,” said the kind-hearted scout, his own voice shaking. “I am sorry to have to tell you that he died two days ago. You know he was not well when he last saw your father. I’ve been doing some scouting work in the mountains. Thinking to visit him, I called at the cabin, and found him seriously ill with fever, in fact, at the point of death. I did all I could for him, but it was little enough, and he died. He gave me this package to give to you, or send to you; for he thought you had started for the East long ago. He thought you would persuade your father to give up his mine and go home—he had never heard of John Forest’s death.”

He put the buckskin bag in her trembling hands.

When she opened it she found it filled with what seemed to be bits of broken green glass.

“Emeralds, and as fine as you’ll ever see,” he explained. “There’s a fortune there, and he wanted me to see that they went to you. It’s a queer place here to deliver them, and a strange——”

He stopped, for she was not looking at the emeralds; thinking of her father, she had begun to weep.

“There was no letter from my uncle?” she said after a while.

“No; he was too weak to write. He sent his love and the emeralds. He was looking for gold, you know. Well, his pick broke through into a cave, and opened up a queer place that must once have been an Indian temple, or medicine lodge. The emeralds had been round the neck of a stone idol. The buckskin string that had held them was decayed, so that they had fallen to the floor, and were covered with dust. He found one, and then, by a search, got all of them.

“His first thought was that perhaps there were many more, and he made a thorough search. I’m afraid that in that search he got the fever that killed him. The place was horridly damp, as I afterward found; for, after his death, I myself made a thorough exploration of the cave, and discovered that fact, though nothing else. The only gems were round the neck of the idol, I am sure.”

She heard him with heartbreaking interest.

“I must think about it,” she said; “I must have time to adjust myself to it. It seems unbelievable. Oh, my poor uncle!”

She seemed almost to have forgotten her strange position on that ledge, the rescue of the scout, and the roaring of the fire above.

For a long time she sat crouching, regaining her strength, while she thought over the sad thing which had thus been brought to her knowledge, and went back in memory to the past.

For two years she had lived in the mining cabin not far from this cañon with her father. In many ways those two years had been hard ones for both her and her father. They had been lonely years to her, for he had been away from home a good deal, and his brother, now dead also, had visited them very seldom.

But the loneliness had recently been broken by the visits of the young man, to whom she had almost from the first given her heart. Clayton was at Crystal Spring, where he intended to make a home for her, and he was to have met her and accompanied her on her way back to the fort, but she had missed him, and so had come alone.

The morning after her return she had seen the fire, and then had discovered that Buffalo Bill, the friend of her lover, was in peril on the high precipice.

As she sat in silence on the ledge, grieving over the death of her uncle, she paid scant attention to the beautiful emeralds lying in her lap; but finally she looked down at them, slowly placed them in the buckskin bag, and then gave it to the scout.

“Keep them for me a while, until we get out of this danger,” she requested. “I wonder how we are to get out, too?” She looked up at the smoke floating over them in a thick cloud. “Have you thought of any way?”

Buffalo Bill, while watching the changing face of the girl, had also been looking at the rope at intervals, fearing the noose would be burned away above. That had not yet happened, and the fire was dying down. There was a great deal of smoke, yet little fire.

He took the buckskin bag of emeralds and restored it to his pocket.

“I think I’d like to see how that fire is doing,” he said, rising to his feet. He began to climb the rope, and was soon at the top.

There was still a good deal of fire in the woods beyond, where some trees were burning, but close by the rocky point there was hardly any blaze now, and the noose of the rope had been untouched.

He leaned over and looked down at the girl.

“It’s cool enough for one to stand it up here now,” he called to her. “If you’d like to come up, make a noose and put it under your arms.”

She made and adjusted the noose, and the strong arms of the scout soon drew her to the top of the precipitous wall.

“Not very pleasant up here even yet,” he said, “but better than down there; and we have the comforting assurance that we’re out of the cañon, and that the rope was equal to the strain.”

“If we keep close to the cañon’s edge, perhaps we can get beyond the fire now,” she suggested. “You have a horse, you said.”

“If the poor fellow hasn’t been roasted. I’m a bit afraid the fire reached him.”

They set out along the edge of the precipice, Buffalo Bill taking the rope.

Though the ground was still hot and smoking in places, they were able to make their way along, and, after a while, they passed out of the burned area, and came into a region which the fire had not touched.

“There the clever rascal is,” said the scout. “Look at him!—as peaceful as a lamb!”

His horse had broken the rope by which it had been tied, had run from the fire, and was now grazing peacefully, not a hundred yards from where the scout and the girl stood.

The girl had asked many questions about her uncle, about his illness, and about the emeralds; but she began to talk of these matters again, when they got beyond the burned area, showing that she had thought of nothing else all the time, even when she seemed to be thinking only of getting away from the fire.

The scout went over the story again, giving all the details, until, by the aid of her imagination, Lena was able to reconstruct the whole thing.

“About those emeralds,” she said. “What am I to do with them?”

“Whatever you please. It was your uncle’s desire for you to have them, so that you might be freed from all want, educate yourself to whatever extent you desired, travel, and enjoy life. It was a satisfaction to him to believe that you would get them, and that they would make you independent. I promised him faithfully that I would deliver them into your hands; and if you hadn’t happened back here as you did, and I had escaped from that fire, it was my intention to return immediately to the fort for the purpose of delivering them to you personally.”

“You are very kind,” she said. “You wouldn’t trust them to the express or to the stages?”

“I should not have felt it safe to do so.”

“The country is full of road agents.”

“Yes; robbers and outlaws of all kinds.”

She seemed to be thinking of this as they walked on toward the scout’s horse.

The animal was caught by Buffalo Bill, and he then insisted that she should ride and that he would walk. He accompanied her to her uncle’s cabin home, which was not far away. It was situated near the stage trail that ran from Glendive to the railroad.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE EAVESDROPPER.

As Buffalo Bill and Lena Forest approached her uncle’s home, a man who had been in the cabin slipped out by the back door.

His horse was hidden in the grove two hundred yards off, and at first he thought of reaching it and riding hurriedly away. But he hesitated; and then, seeing an opening, he crawled under the floor.

“I’ll just hear what that scout and the girl aire talkin’ about,” he said. “And I’d like to know about them emeralds, if he or she has got ’em. He was to have given ’em to her. But I’m gamblin’ he ain’t any honester than other folks, and that he ain’t said a word to her about ’em. I’ve got to git my fist on ’em, er know why. Great howlin’ tomcats! Them gems aire worth a fortune that would make these hyer little common fortunes you hear about look sick. I’m bettin’ Buffalo Bill never hints a word to her about ’em. He’d be a fool to, and he ain’t a fool!”

He was hiding under the floor when Buffalo Bill and the girl came to the cabin and entered it. To his surprise, they were speaking of the emeralds which he had been sure the scout would never mention to her.

“Oh, she’s got ’em now, has she?” he thought, as he heard the talk. He pressed an ear to the boards above his head. “Oh, ho! He thinks there’s danger that some one will git onto the fact that she’s got ’em, and that she’s in danger with ’em in this section of the country. I reckon he don’t dream that I’m already onto the fact that there aire such gems; that I came on him when he was givin’ his promise to old Gordon there in the mountains, and that I follered him, hopin’ to git a chance to pinch ’em; and that I fired the pines, believin’ that I could roast him, and afterward git them emeralds from his dead body. Well, I ain’t got ’em yit, but I’ll have ’em!”

Though he so desired those emeralds, all his efforts to get them had been sneaking and cowardly in the extreme.

“I’ll have Bruce go with me, and I’ll let him carry them,” he heard Lena say. “I’m going East, Mr. Cody, for a little visit, and perhaps Bruce can go part way with me, on the stage.”

“Bruce! Bruce!” the rascal muttered. “Who’s Bruce? So he’s to carry ’em, is he? He’s sweet on the girl. I’ve heard that she has a ‘steady,’ and that they’re going to marry. She’ll have him go with her, and she’ll have him carry the emeralds, for no one will ever think of him carryin’ ’em. That’s the game, is it? Oh, no; nobody will ever think of that!”

The listening rascal slapped his leg so hard in his jubilant mood that he became startled; the sound of talking ceased. He heard the scout walk to the door, and then walk back.

“That was my horse, I guess, made that noise,” he heard the scout say.

The man crouched into as small a space as he could, and lay shivering, fearing now to breathe. Soon he heard the talking going on again.

“Oh! Aha!” he muttered, listening. “She’s goin’ to take the next stage, which comes through here day after to-morrow, and go on that, and her young man is to go with her. I reckon that when they git East they’ll marry. He’ll be a fool not to marry her, if they git through with the emeralds. But I reckon them gems aire due in this direction; and, somehow, I think I’ll git ’em!”

When he had heard apparently all that was to be said concerning the emeralds and the manner of their transmission to the East, he crawled from under the house.

He was standing under a tree, beyond the corner of the house, when he was surprised there by Buffalo Bill, who came on him suddenly, the scout having issued from the front door.

“Hello!” said the scout gruffly. “What are you doing here?”

Instead of answering, the man turned about and ran.

Buffalo Bill drew a revolver; then lowered it. He did not want to shoot the fellow, nor did he want to alarm the girl.

“The rascal was slipping up to the house for some purpose,” he said, “but he didn’t reach it. I came out and caught him here under the tree. Some scoundrelly scamp who thought to do a little stealing! If I tell Miss Forest it will only frighten her. And her nerves are gone all to pieces now. What’s the use of worrying her further?”

Buffalo Bill watched the man as he disappeared within the grove, and saw him come out with his horse and ride off.

“The villain tried to keep his face turned away so that I wouldn’t know him next time I saw him, but I think I’d recognize him, just the same!”

He returned to the house, and discovered Lena contemplating the emeralds, which she had poured out on the table.

“Good thing he didn’t get to see them,” was the scout’s thought, when he observed that.

“It seems almost as if my uncle must come again, and that I ought to wait here for him,” she said, looking up. “It’s strange how I can’t make myself realize that he is dead.”

She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at the scout. She was a handsome girl, clad simply, but in good taste, and he could note her beauty. Her brown eyes were dark and dreamy, and the flush now in her cheeks, though it was a bit hectic, gave them the color that they needed. The hand on which she rested her cheek was small and shapely, though it was now rope-burned and red from the effects of her climb that morning to save the life of the scout.

“It’s hard to realize a thing which one doesn’t see,” Buffalo Bill assented.

“Of course, I can’t stay here,” she said; “and, really, I must go at once; for hereafter this house will seem haunted to me. I’ll go straight East, and have Bruce go with me. I may never come back again. And yet I should like to look just once on my father’s grave.”

“It’s a lonely place,” he said. “We heaped a cairn of stones over it, and set up a little wooden headboard, bearing his name and the date of his death.”

“I shall put a costly monument there some time,” she announced.

“He was worthy of it; for he was a good man, and I’m sure his last thoughts were of you.”

The brown eyes dimmed again with tears.

She placed the emeralds in the buckskin bag, stowed it in the bosom of her dress, and walked to the door. Standing there, she glanced longingly up the trail and out across the river, to the side of the cañon she had scaled, and then let her eyes wander on to the smoking pines that stood in blackened ranks still higher.

“I’m expecting every minute that Bruce will come,” she said. “Something is keeping him.” She sat down again by the table. “Let me get you some breakfast,” she urged; “and pardon me for not thinking of it before.”

“I’ve been too busy to think of anything to eat, my dear girl. Does Bruce know you are here?”

“Yes; I left word for him that I was going to see my uncle, and told him how to get here. But I’m neglecting you! I have been too much excited. I’ll get you something. And that will help to pass the time away, too.”

She was soon busy in the little kitchen.

Buffalo Bill was thinking of the man he had seen under the tree. “I wonder if he could have been nearer the house than that?” he began now to question, as he left the house again and walked out to the tree.

He began to scan the ground between the house and the tree. The color rose in his face as he did so, for he saw that the man had been at the door and close by the windows; also he saw the hole under the house, which looked as if something had lately passed through it.

“Have you a dog?” he asked, returning to the house.

“No,” she said. “Uncle never kept a dog, though often I’ve though he ought to have one, and a good, savage one, too, living out here alone so much. But no one ever really troubled him. Several months ago a drunken man came along the trail, and at another time an Indian tried to get into the house to steal something; but that’s all.”

“That was enough!”

She was bustling about the kitchen, and soon she had the breakfast ready, and they sat down to it.

“You’re expecting some one, too?” she said. “Pawnee Bill, and who was the other?”

“Nick Nomad.”

“Oh, yes; such an odd name I couldn’t remember it. And you say he is an odd character?”

“But with a heart of gold. Old Nick Nomad is as true and good a friend as I ever could wish to have.”

“And all three of you are here looking for Blackfeet Indians and road agents?”

“Yes.”

“I should think that would be dangerous?”

“It has its drawbacks—a hunter of road agents may get a bullet from one of them at any time.”

He said it lightly, yet he meant it; the calling was peculiarly dangerous. He preferred other work, and even scouting for Indians in a hostile Indian country he considered far less perilous.

When the breakfast was ended, she went to the door again and looked up and down the trail.

“Your friends are coming!” she announced.

Buffalo Bill stepped quickly to the door.

Pawnee Bill and Nick Nomad were approaching on horseback, from the direction of Glendive, a town situated beyond Crystal Spring.

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE MUSTANG CATCHERS.

Bruce Clayton, the lover and promised husband of pretty Lena Forest, appeared at the cabin while Pawnee Bill and Nomad were greeting the famous scout.

Her face flushed prettily as Buffalo Bill spoke in praise of her heroic work in rescuing him from the fire. But it flushed even more, with a glow of love and joy, when Bruce appeared. He had not known of the death of the girl’s uncle, and was shocked by the news; but he declared his entire willingness to accompany her in the stage to the railroad station, and on East, if she wished it. There could be no doubt that such a journey with the girl he loved would be the supreme pleasure of his life.

Nomad drew Buffalo Bill aside at the first opportunity.

“Buffler,” he said, “we seen a feller hikin’ toward ther hills fast as his hoss could go, and he comed from this direction; seemed ter me he was scai’t about somethin’ er ’nother.”

The old trapper had seen the man who had fled from the cabin—the eavesdropper whom Buffalo Bill had surprised beneath the tree.

While they talked, Pawnee Bill joined them. He was the same gallant, debonair, handsome scout, dressed with an attention to appearance that marked him among the careless bordermen—his velvet jacket, his gold-mounted revolvers, and the costly saddle that was on the back of his horse, always drawing attention wherever he went.

“What, ho!” he said gayly, as he joined the scout and the trapper. “Cody, we’d found a band of mustangers, and we half think they are mixed up in some way with this stage-robbery business that’s making the land hereabout notorious. I think we’d better investigate them a bit.”

Buffalo Bill mentioned the man he had seen, and who had been sighted by Nomad.

“Oh, yes; he was riding as if the Old Boy was after him.” Pawnee Bill laughed at the recollection. “He was going so fast that he was only hitting the high places. And, come to think of it, he was heading in the direction of the valley where those mustangers hang out at present.”

Buffalo Bill told him what he suspected, told him of the death of the girl’s uncle, and of the valuable emeralds with which he had been intrusted.

“She’d better get out of here with them as quick as she can,” said Pawnee Bill. “The knowledge of such things can’t be kept; and if she isn’t held up and robbed of them, it will be because she moves out in a hurry.”

After discussing the matter with these friends, the scout had another talk with Lena, speaking also to young Clayton; and it was arranged that she and Bruce should go that day to Glendive, and there take the next stage for the railroad, thus getting out of the country with the emeralds as soon as they could.

Shortly after this talk, Buffalo Bill rode away with his two pards, disappearing from sight of the cabin, and journeying in the direction of the camp of the mustangers.

When they reached the valley where the mustangers were, they found that a mustang drive was in progress.

“This looks honest,” said Buffalo Bill. “Men who make a business of robbery and road-agent work aren’t going to fool with catching wild horses; they can make more money in the other line.”

He and his friends looked about for the man who had been seen by him at the cabin, but failed to find him.

The “boss” of the mustangers was a dark-skinned fellow known as Black John; a man of herculean build, whose great size did not hamper his movements, for he was light on his feet and as quick of motion as any man that followed him.

An extended semicircle of mustangers was closing in on a band of wild horses. Few words were spoken. Each man understood his duty, and was doing it.

The three pards rode close up to the line of mustangers and looked on with interest.

In the old days, the plains and foothills held many bands of mustangs, or wild horses, small, hardy animals, of great speed and endurance, and their capture in large numbers was a paying occupation. In some sections of the great West there are still considerable bodies of mustangs, but no such bands as once existed.

The method of catching these wild horses required great patience and persistence. They were not lassoed, after being run down in a hot race, as many people suppose; they were too fleet for that. The common method adopted was to walk them down. For days, and even weeks, the mustangers would follow slowly a band of wild horses. Always the mustangs held pretty close to a certain grazing ground to which they were accustomed, and if driven away from it, they invariably came back to it. Usually once a day they sought some river or water hole to drink.

Knowing their habits, the mustangers would drive toward a band and start the animals to moving. At first the wild horses would dash away, running in fright. The mustangers did not pursue rapidly, but kept their horses at a slow pace. The object was to keep the animals continually moving. The first day or so the mustangs would run a great deal and tire themselves.

The mustangers prevented them from stopping long enough to feed, and herded them away from the customary watering place. At the end of a week the mustangs began to show signs of exhaustion. Eventually, thirst, starvation, and fatigue would do their work, when the horses could be driven in any direction.

When this much had been accomplished, nooses were concealed in the grass, with men hidden by them. The mustangs were driven over these nooses, which were jerked, securing the mustangs by the legs. One by one they were thus trapped, being driven time after time over the hidden nooses, until all fell victims to the cunning of the mustangers.

There were two hundred mustangs or more being driven that day upon the nooses concealed in the grass along the little stream where the mustangers had their camp; and Buffalo Bill and his friends, sitting their horses near by, watched with interest the work of the capture of these wild horses.

When a mustang was captured, a short chain was affixed to one foreleg, and he was then released. He could not run; when he tried it he invariably stepped on the chain with one of his hind feet and either threw himself or gave himself such a wrench that he soon gave up trying. Besides, the mustangs were now too tired to make much effort to get away.

When all had been captured they were to be driven into a high-fenced corral, and left to recuperate; after which there would be exciting times in “breaking” them, when such stunts of wild riding and bucking would be seen as could probably be witnessed nowhere else.

Twenty or thirty of the mustangs that were being crowded upon the hidden nooses broke away, and made a dash to escape.

Buffalo Bill and his companions were near the point where they broke out, and started in pursuit of them.

One of them, a handsome fellow, separated from the others; Pawnee Bill, whirling his lariat, started in chase.

The lariat flew out, and its noose circled the head of the mustang.

But the horse ridden by Pawnee Bill set its foot in a dog hole, and fell, throwing the dead shot to the ground. At the same instant, the jerk on the lariat tore it from the saddle. As it flew out it became wrapped round the body of the fallen rider, dragging him across the plain.

Buffalo Bill shouted, and rode to the help of his friend, driving his horse at its highest speed.

Pawnee Bill, caught in the lariat and dragged by the frightened mustang, would have been dragged to his death if Buffalo Bill had not ridden quickly to his rescue.

Leaning from his saddle, Buffalo Bill slashed the rope with his knife; and the mustang raced on, leaving Pawnee Bill on the ground, somewhat crestfallen and bruised, but practically unhurt. He sprang up, and ran to get his horse, which had got its foot out of the dog hole, and seemed to be uninjured.

“Cody, yours forever!” he shouted. “I’ll come to your aid likewise and also whenever you get into trouble like that.”

Then he was in the saddle, chasing the running mustang, which was dragging the severed end of the rope. He succeeded in riding around it, and drove it back toward the herd, where Buffalo Bill noosed it, and it was subdued.

“Great work, Cody!” called Black John, the leader of the mustangers. “That is your mustang, if you want him.”

“I’ll make you a present of him, so far as my interest goes,” said Buffalo Bill. “It seems a pity, though, that such a fine fellow has to be subdued and turned into a work animal.”

“True enough, Cody; but we men have to work, and why not horses? He’ll never do enough work to harm him, in my judgment. I get twenty dollars apiece for these, after they’re a bit broken, and there’s some money in it.”

A man was galloping across the valley.

“Some one is coming,” said the scout, drawing Black John’s attention to the horseman. “Who is he?”

Black John looked at the man.

“That’s Toby Sam,” he said; “one of my men.”

“Why Toby Sam?” said the scout.

“Just the name we call him by, that’s all; I dunno what his real name is.”

Toby Sam was the rascal who had been under the tree at Gordon’s and had fled when spoken to by Buffalo Bill. He was one of the mustangers! It was a fact so suspicious that the scout decided to watch the mustang catchers a while longer, and to find out more about Toby Sam.

When Toby Sam arrived, and discovered that Buffalo Bill and his friends were there, he showed much confusion, but tried to cover it up.

Old Nick Nomad rode up to him.

“Stranger,” he said bluntly, “I’m glad ter know ye, but I has seen yer before, when you was ridin’ at sech a lickety-clip toward this valley, from the direction of Gordon’s cabin, over on ther stage trail. Thet war this mornin’.”

“You’re mistaken,” said Toby Sam. “I wasn’t over there this mornin’.”

“You were not at Forest’s this morning?” said Buffalo Bill, his sharp eyes boring Toby Sam. “Didn’t I see you under the tree there close by the house; and, when I spoke to you, didn’t you run and get your horse, and ride away without answering me?”

“It’s a mistake,” said Toby Sam. “I wasn’t over there at all.”

“Then I beg your pardon,” said the scout. “It was a mistake.”

But he knew that Toby Sam had lied, and he wondered why.

In connection with the fact that Toby Sam might have seen those emeralds, or heard talk about them, it was so suggestive that the scout became uneasy.

CHAPTER XXXV. THE ATTACK ON THE STAGE.

After tarrying with the mustang catchers of the Bitter Water, and trying to study Toby Sam, Black John, and others, Buffalo Bill and his friends departed, with no very clear conclusions, except a deepening suspicion against Toby Sam.

They journeyed toward the stage trail, thinking to intersect it where the stage would pass, and there get a final word with Lena Forest, who was to take the stage that day to the railroad.

As they approached the crossing, they heard what was undoubtedly an attack on the stagecoach.

Buffalo Bill and his companions rode rapidly toward the shots and the tumult.

When they reached the trail they saw only a woman running about in distraction. The stage and the outlaws were gone. The woman was Lena Forest.

“The robbers have taken her emeralds!” was the conclusion of Buffalo Bill, as he dashed up to her, with Pawnee Bill and Nomad at his heels.

She stared at him wild-eyed, and then rushed to meet him.

“Bruce!” she cried. “They have carried him away.”

It was not the gems she thought of, but her lover.

“And the emeralds?” said Buffalo Bill.

“They are here,” she said. “I concluded to carry them myself. The stage was attacked right here by masked men. They took my watch and purse, but didn’t know of the emeralds; but they carried away Bruce! He must be—be followed at once.”

Buffalo Bill slipped out of the saddle.

“Where are the other passengers?” he said. “What became of them?”

“They went on in the stage, after the holdup. The driver whipped up his horses and drove on; but I threw open the coach door and leaped out. I couldn’t go on, for Bruce had been seized and carried away by the road agents. I wanted to do something to help him; but when I got back here the road agents were gone. They seemed in a great hurry, and did their work quickly.”

“Did you get a look at the face of any one of them?” Pawnee Bill asked.

“They were masked.”

“What kind of horses did they ride?”

“I don’t know; Indian ponies, it seems to me.”

“And they went south?”

“Yes; toward the mountains.”

Lena declared her belief that the road agents had taken young Clayton because they had received word in some manner of the emeralds, and believed he was carrying them.

“When they discover their mistake,” she said, “they may kill him!” She looked appealingly at Buffalo Bill. “I risked my life to save you from the fire, Mr. Cody,” she reminded; “and now I ask in return that you help me to rescue Bruce from the hands of those men, if it can be done. It must be done, if he is not slain by them at once, or as soon as they find he hasn’t the emeralds.”

Buffalo Bill was ready to give her the promise asked.

“One of us will go with you to the railroad, or back to Glendive,” he said; “and the others will follow the outlaws as fast as possible.”

“No, no!” she cried. “I am going with you!”

Altogether, it seemed to him that the situation was unique. The outlaws had attacked the stage to get possession of the emeralds. Not finding them, and believing that young Clayton had them, they were carrying him away, and had gone in great haste. And now the girl who really carried on her person the coveted gems was urging a pursuit of the road agents, and declaring her intention of taking part in it.

“We have no horse for you,” he said, to dissuade her. “Besides, we need a larger force, for there will probably be a fight. If one of us conducts you to Glendive, or the railroad, he could summon help.”

“The delay will be too great,” she urged. “Those men ought to be followed at once, and we can’t weaken your force by sending a man away. Some chance may come to help Bruce. And I must go with you.” She looked at the scout’s horse. “Your horse will carry double, I think; and you’ll find me a good horsewoman. I can mount behind you.”

It was a waste of time to protest against the wishes of such a woman. Moreover, Buffalo Bill admired her pluck and high courage, and he knew she would be no weakling. The woman who could climb a wall of that perilous cañon and hurl a rope to him, as she had done, had more than the usual share of coolness and daring. In short, he recognized in this brown-haired, bright-faced young woman the stuff of which heroines are made.

“The emeralds!” he said, as a final objection.

“Let them go! I’d give them to the road agents willingly if they would release Bruce. And, Mr. Cody, I confess to you that is what I mean to do if I get the chance—offer the gems to those men for Bruce’s release. We can’t fight them, they’re too strong; but we might buy them, if we can get in touch with them to enter into negotiations. That’s what I hope to do. They want the emeralds, not Bruce.”

“Very true,” he admitted. “I think they want the emeralds much more than they do him.”

“What I can’t understand is, how they knew I had them, or anything about them. But they did. They searched Bruce hurriedly; and I heard one of them tell him to hand over the emeralds. Where did they find out about them?”

“I’ll make a confession to you,” said Buffalo Bill, “as we ride along. Lucky this horse is big and strong, and doesn’t object to double burdens!” he cried, as he helped her to mount to the back of his horse, and then he swung up into the saddle.

Pawnee Bill and Nomad started their horses, and turned into the broad trail left by the road agents when they rode away with their prisoner.

“The confession I make is,” said Buffalo Bill, “that a man who, I believe, was in this stage holdup, was seen by me at your uncle’s home when I was there—when I came there with the emeralds, after the fire. I didn’t want to tell you before, and make you uneasy. But I saw him out under the tree, and when I tried to speak with him he ran. I have been thinking the matter over since, and am pretty sure now that he listened at the window, or under the floor.”

“Under the floor?”

“You’ll remember that I asked you if your uncle kept a dog? That was because I had seen a hole under the floor which appeared as if something—some animal or man—had recently been in it. I think now that the man I’m speaking of had really been under the floor. If so, he probably heard our talk about the emeralds.

“Now, another thing: That man my friends and I saw with the mustang catchers of the Bitter Water. He is called Toby Sam.”

“You think the mustang catchers had a hand in this holdup?”

“It looks it. I’m guessing a good deal, you see, and really am in the dark; but that is my present guess.”

The horses were going at a gallop now.

Buffalo Bill drew rein, and asked the others to stop.

“We’re foolish,” he said, “to take those emeralds on with us. The thing to do is to hide them here somewhere. Then, no matter what happens, they will be safe.”

“But I intend to offer them for the release of my dear Bruce,” she objected.

“It wouldn’t be right to the memory of your uncle,” said the scout. “He gave you those emeralds for a certain purpose.”

“Yes, to make my life happy; but it can never be happy if Bruce should be killed, especially if I had the feeling that I was to blame because I held back the emeralds.”

Nevertheless, Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, and Nomad talked her out of the notion of attempting to make this sacrifice of the gems.

“You are wiser than I,” she said, in submitting. “Do with them as you like.”

Accordingly, they concealed the emeralds in the buckskin bag at the foot of a small tree, whose location it would be easy to remember. Then they went on with the girl, following in the road agents’ trail, and discussing the question of whether Pawnee Bill had not better ride to Glendive for assistance.

Hardly were they out of sight of the tree where they had buried the gems when Black John, the leader of the mustang catchers, came out of some bushes not far off, and advanced into the open, leading his horse.

“Now, what in thunder did they bury there?” he was saying. “I’ll jes’ take a look, and see!”

He found the place where the emeralds had been hid, and unearthed them.

“Great Rocky Mountains!” he gasped, when he opened the buckskin bag and saw the priceless emeralds that lay in it. “But all the fiends’ luck, if this ain’t a funny deal! Here we planned to rob the stage and git the emeralds that Toby Sam tole us about. He said that the young feller was to carry ’em, for safety. I was late gittin’ here; and before I could do more’n hide they had gone for the stage, and was kitin’ out south with the young feller a prisoner. And now here comes along Buffalo Bill and his crowd, with the young lady, and before goin’ furder they buries the jewels here, fer me! Waugh! I’ve heard of mericles, and this is one of ’em!”

He held up the gems and let them slide through his greedy fingers.

“Luck—luck, such luck!” he muttered. “I’m wadin’ in luck, I’m swimmin’ in it. I’m jes’ natcherly wallerin’ in luck! Hoop-la! Emeralds fer a king! And now they’re right here in my fist.”

Craft and greediness came to him.

“Nobody’s seen me; the boys has gone on with Stockton; and here I’ve got the emeralds. Nobody’s seen me!” He looked all around, and saw not a person anywhere. “By the great tarantulas, why should I divide ’em with the other fellers? Why should I? We expected to git holt of ’em, and divide ’em up, and it would have been a handsome haul fer each of us, even then. Toby Sam put us onto it because he was too durn cowardly to try to make the riffle himself. But now—now they’re mine! Why shouldn’t I hold ’em, and say nothin’? But durn ef I don’t, too!”

He stowed the buckskin bag of emeralds somewhere in an inner pocket of his coat. Then he mounted his horse and rode slowly in the direction taken by the road agents, and by the men and the girl who had pursued them.

“Luck!” he was muttering. “I’m swimmin’, I’m wallerin’, in luck. Was there ever sech luck in the world before? I don’t believe it. Hope to Harry I won’t wake up and find that I’m jes’ dreamin’; that I ain’t here, and there ain’t been no holdup; and that there ain’t any emeralds at all! Oh, gosh all fiddlesticks, wouldn’t that make me sweat! Surely I can’t be dreamin’! Lemme take another look at ’em, to be certain.”

He took another look, and was sure that he was wide awake, and that the emeralds were really in his possession.

“Luck!” he cried. “Hoop-la! I’m rollin’ in the biggest luck I ever heard of.”

Then he rode on, jubilant and excited beyond words to express.

CHAPTER XXXVI. DISAPPOINTED ROAD AGENTS.

Black John had not come in time to lead the gang in the attack on the stage. In his absence, Toby Sam was the leader; and the fact that Toby Sam was the leader accounted in large measure for the precipitate haste of the men engaged in the holdup.

They were in such a hurry that they did no very thorough job. When they could not find the emeralds on Clayton, they simply bundled him on a horse and rode off with him, sure he had them concealed in his clothing, and that they could search him at their leisure, where there was no danger of rifle bullets.

Toby Sam was a coward. That was the explanation of this singular action. Like leader, like man; all were cowards when he led them.

When they had ridden at a sharp gallop for a couple of miles, they stopped their headlong pace and crowded around the prisoner, whose feet were tied under his horse’s belly, and whose hands were tied behind his back.

Toby Sam flashed a glittering revolver and pointed it at him.

“Cough up, now!” he commanded. “We ain’t got no time to fool with you. We want them emeralds you’re carryin’, and we’re goin’ to have ’em. If you don’t fork ’em out, er tell us where to find ’em quick, we’ll tear the clothes off of ye, and cut you into ribbons. Understand, we’re goin’ to have ’em!”

Bruce Clayton smiled disdainfully.

“I haven’t got them,” he said.

“I s’pose you’ll say you don’t know anything about ’em?”

“No, I won’t say that, since you seem to know better; but I haven’t got them.”

“You did have them!”

“Not on this stage trip.”

“No? Do you mean it?” Toby Sam howled the words, and his comrades crowded angrily round the young man. “Who had ’em, then?”

“When I get ready, I’ll tell you that,” Bruce said coolly. “You know so much, I shouldn’t think you’d need to ask me anything.”

“Search him!” yelled Toby Sam.

Some of the road agents threw themselves on their helpless prisoner and searched him thoroughly, doing it in the roughest fashion. However, they failed to find the emeralds.

“He ain’t got ’em!” they yelled.

Toby Sam threw up his revolver again. He was brave enough when his enemy was tied, and could not possibly harm him.

“Tell us where them em’rulds aire!” he ordered. “And do it mighty quick, er you’ll do no more talkin’ in this world.”

There was such menace in his words and tone that Bruce hesitated.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “if you’ll let me go.”

“Boyees, you hear him?” said Toby Sam.

“After ther boss comes, we’ll let him go, if he tells the truth,” said one of the men.

“Yes, after the boss comes!” others shouted.

“Say, you fellows,” said the young man coolly, “couldn’t you just whisk those masks aside, so that I can see your faces? I always like to know who I’m talking with. Strikes me this is a one-sided affair; you know me, but hanged if I do you.”

“But you’d like to?”

“Well, yes; I’d like to.”

“Tell us where them emeralds aire!” yelled Toby Sam.

“Then you’ll let me go free.”

“We will, when the boss comes, if you speak honest. Them emeralds aire the things we’re after.”

“That’s your solemn promise?”

“Yes. Now, where aire they?”

Toby Sam still held his revolver cocked.

“Those emeralds are in the possession of Miss Forest. I can tell you that now, for she is on the stage, and the stage has got such a start of you that you couldn’t overtake it, no matter how hard you might try. She has got them; and they’re safe.”

A roar of surprise and anger arose.

“But, see here,” said Toby Sam argumentatively, “I was under her house when she and Buffler Bill war talkin’ of how they war goin’ to send them emeralds on; and I heard her say that she would give ’em to you to carry, ’cause then they’d be safer, fer no one would be expectin’ you to have ’em. What about that? Ain’t that right?”

“I don’t doubt you were sneak enough to crawl under the house and listen in that way, since you admit it.”

“But ain’t that right? Didn’t she say that?”

“I think she did; but she is a woman, and a woman has an everlasting right to change her mind whenever she wants to. She changed her mind.”

“And she carried ’em, instead of you?”

“That’s right; she carried them.”

“Why was you along, then?” Toby Sam howled. “Answer me that!”

“As her escort. I meant to go East with her.”

“What for, if not to carry the emeralds?”

The young man’s face flushed.

“I intended to marry her when we reached the East,” he admitted.

When some further sharp questions and threats did not change the prisoner’s story, Toby Sam and some of his men drew aside and discussed the matter.

“Better wait fer the comin’ of the boss.”

“But if we wait, then the chance of hittin’ the stage may be lost,” was the answer to this advice.

After they had talked a while they came back to Clayton.

“Young feller,” said Toby Sam, “we aire fer the present believin’ what you’ve told us about them emeralds. We’re goin’ to hold you, because, if you’ve lied, then we’ll have a happy settlement with you later; and, further, because we wants to hear what the boss says about it. But we’re goin’ to send a man to the railroad. He’ll manage to git into communication with the young lady you’re sweet on; and he’ll say to her: ‘We’re holdin’ the man you expect to marry. You’ve got certain emeralds we’re interested in. Hand over them emeralds, and we’ll let your feller go free. Otherwise, we cuts short his career with a swift bullet!’”

“And now, to furnish proof to her that we have really got you, and aire meanin’ bizness, we’re goin’ to ask ye to write her a little letter—jes’ a few words from you to her, to that effeck. If she does hand over the emeralds to our man, well and good fer you; but if she don’t, then we ruther think that we’ll snuff out your life lamp in a hurry. What d’ye say?”

Bruce took time to consider this.

“May I write what I please,” he asked, “or what I’m ordered?”

“You writes what we tells you.”

“Then I refuse to write anything.”

He set his jaws stubbornly.

Toby Sam’s big revolver appeared again, threatening him.

“That’s all right,” said Clayton. “Shoot me, if you want to, and then you’ll never get those emeralds.”

“What’ll you write?” Toby Sam demanded.

There were harsh and angry cries from the other men.

“I’ll write to her to sell enough of the gems to get a thousand dollars, and to pay it over only after I’m released.”

“Well, you don’t! We has all them emeralds, or we has your life!”

“Crack away!” said Clayton defiantly. “If you kill me, remember that you won’t get anything.”

CHAPTER XXXVII. SETTING A TRAP.

While they were still talking, Black John made his appearance, riding up in such furious haste that his horse was white with foam. He had circled the pursuers and got ahead of them.

“Git a move on ye!” he commanded.

“But, see here,” said Toby Sam, “does you understand ther situation? This feller didn’t have the emeralds at all, but the girl’s got ’em, and she’s on the stage; so we’re figurin’ about sendin’ a man to the railroad, and tryin’ to open up negotiations with her, and sorter trade him to her fer the emeralds. We reckon it may work.”

Black John answered, with an oath:

“She didn’t go on the stage, but jumped out; and now she’s with Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, and that old trapper, and they’re follerin’ your trail.”

It was a study in human nature to watch the effect of this revelation. It held singular proof of the fear which the names of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill had inspired in such men. They were almost in a panic, some of them jerking the heads of their horses round as if they wished to ride away as quickly as they could.

Black John had the buckskin bag of emeralds at the moment in an inner pocket of his coat, but he did not mention that to them. He had made up his mind to keep the emeralds for himself.

Another desire had come into his heart—the desire to rid himself forever of the pursuit of Buffalo Bill and his companions. Buffalo Bill had an unpleasant way of taking a trail and staying with it until he accomplished what he set out for. To stop Buffalo Bill it would be necessary to kill him. Of that Black John was certain. So now he had planned to compass the death of Buffalo Bill and his comrades, and to capture the girl.

If the girl was captured and the emeralds were not found on her, that could not be charged to him; and if she should admit that they had been hidden, and should point out the place, and then they were not found, that could not be charged against him.

Altogether, he fancied he had worked out a clever plan, and at once proposed it.

“Ride on,” he said, “and I’ve got a proposition to talk over as we go.”

He stared at the prisoner through the holes of his black half mask, and Bruce Clayton returned the stare with interest.

It was a strange-looking cavalcade that moved on—the prisoner bound and tied to his horse in the midst of those masked figures.

Black John unfolded his plan:

“We can lay fer ’em and trap ’em, and git the emeralds from the girl, and at the same time wipe out Buffalo Bill and the devils that aire with him. It’s the trick to play.”

It did not suit Toby Sam, the coward. And others of the gang shared his feelings and his fears. Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, and old Nick Nomad were noted as the most desperate fighters of the border, and they were men not easy to trap. It was a certain thing that in an attempt to “wipe them out,” some of the outlaws would meet death. Toby Sam and those who thought as he did were not yet ready to die.

“It’d be a better and a safer plan,” said Toby Sam, “if we git word to ’em that we’ll swap this young feller fer the emeralds. That girl will jump at the offer, fer she’s goin’ to marry this feller. She’ll take that bait quick; and, as far as the young feller is concerned, we don’t want him, and if we keep him we’ll jes’ have to kill him.”

Even as he talked, Toby Sam looked backward, fearing to see the pursuing scouts.

“If we git them emeralds,” he added, “and make a divvy, we’ll be that well fixed fer money that we can quit this hyer other bizness we’ve been workin’.”

He meant the mustang catching. They followed mustang catching as a blind. As mustangers, they had an excuse for being in that part of the country, and for shifting from point to point; and mustanging explained the money they occasionally displayed in the gambling resorts and saloons of the towns. They did not really care for mustanging, though they were glad enough to sell the mustangs they caught.

Toby Sam, being disguised and anxious to conceal his identity from Bruce, did not say “mustanging,” yet his comrades knew what he meant.

Black John was not pleased to see so many of his men incline to Toby Sam’s view.

“We’ve got to wipe out them cussed scouts!” he declared. “We’ll all be in the penitentiary inside of a month if we don’t. And the thing now will be dead easy. Jes’ lay fer ’em, as they come follerin’ on our trail, shoot ’em from ambush, and that ends ’em. Nothing dangerous er to be skeered of about that.”

Black John’s position as “boss,” together with his arguments, won; and the outlaws began to look for a good point for an ambuscade.

They found it soon, on a hillside that overlooked a narrow pass through which the pursuers would be expected to go. They rode through the pass, circuited around, and gained the hillside, and lay down there under some scrubby trees.

Their horses were placed beyond the hill, and the prisoner was left there in charge of two men, one of whom was Toby Sam. For Black John knew what a coward Toby was, and feared to place him where he might think his precious hide was in danger.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. A CAPTURE AND AN ESCAPE.

When Buffalo Bill came in sight of the hill where the outlaws lay waiting for him, and saw the narrow pass through which he must go, he stopped, for he was wary and alert to discover signs of danger.

“They were in a great hurry here,” he said, “and I suppose they went right on; but, just the same, that looks too favorable for a trap, and I think we’ll investigate it.”

He brought out his field glasses and surveyed the sides of the hill and the pass as well as he could, without discovering anything.

Pawnee Bill and Nomad also scanned the suspected points, and saw nothing out of the way.

“If any one is there, they see us, or have seen us,” said the scout.

He turned his horse about and rode behind a hill, and the others did the same.

Buffalo Bill wished heartily that Lena Forest was not with his party. He did not doubt her courage. But she was a young woman, and in the wild work he anticipated there was no place for a woman, however brave she was. Yet he knew that she would not go back. She had already refused to do that; and, of course, he could not leave her without protection. But now he made another suggestion, without believing she would accept it. This suggestion was for her to accompany Pawnee Bill to the town of Glendive, where she could remain, and Pawnee Bill could gather a force there and hurry back with it.

Pawnee Bill stood ready to go, but Lena Forest demurred.

“I am not a child, and I’m not a weakling, if I am a woman,” she declared. “I’ve given way to you, and have left the emeralds behind; but I’m going on, in this trail, when you go on, if I have to walk.”

“I’ll ride for help,” said Pawnee Bill, “though you know, Cody, that if you’re to mix in any fighting, I’d rather be in it with you than to eat when I’m hungry.”

After a time of discussion, Pawnee Bill departed, on a swift ride for assistance.

“I can’t go on,” said Buffalo Bill, “until I’m positive no road agents are on that hillside. So, if you will stay here with Nomad, Lena, I’ll make it my business to find out.”

“Look out fer yerself, Buffler, when ye do!” Nomad warned.

Black John was as wily and wary as Buffalo Bill. He had seen the scout; and, while leaving the most of his men to guard the pass, he was himself, with a few others, moving swiftly, for the purpose of trapping the scout where he was.

Hence it happened that while Buffalo Bill was stealing along under cover of the hills, intending to swing in a semicircle and get behind the outlaws, if they were on that hillside, Black John was riding as silently in a semicircle round in the other direction, intending either to trap the scout and his companions in the scrubby grove, or drive them into the pass, where they would come under the guns of the road agents there.

When Black John came in sight of the spot where he thought to find Buffalo Bill, both the scouts were gone. But Nomad was there, with Lena Forest.

“Cody and his pard have rid on toward the pass,” was Black John’s conclusion, “and the boyees will rake ’em in there. So here we go for to rake in the two we sees before us. Now we put our hands on them emeralds, fer here’s ther girl that’s got ’em.”

He could hardly repress a smile, for he felt the buckskin bag of emeralds pressing in a lump against his flesh, under his coat.

But that mention of the emeralds was a bait for the men, and they moved forward with him, making a clever sneak upon the trapper and the girl.

Nomad was talking in a fatherly way with Lena Forest, telling her that she was foolish in insisting on staying with Buffalo Bill, when all she could do was to hamper him.

“Ye see, I’m older’n he is,” he was saying, “and so I’ve got past ther p’int where I’m skeered ter say my say ter a woman because her face is purty. ‘Purty is as purty does’ ter me now; though onct there war a time when ther sight of a flutterin’ dress would set my heart ter knockin’, and I wouldn’t had any more sense than a two-year-old. Them times is gone by; I’m old, and I’m thet humly that I’m ashamed ter look in a lookin’-glass, and I know it. So I kin afford ter speak plain ter ye. You’re makin’ things hard fer Buffler by insistin’ on stayin’ with him. ’Tain’t no proper place for a woman, and——”

“But how can I leave Bruce and——”

“Thar ye go; thar ye go! When a gal gits in love she loses her sense. And that’s what ails ye. I don’t object ter ye thinkin’ proper good and strong of ther man ye expect ter marry; but at ther same time, hoss sense is hoss sense, and not somethin’ diff’runt. I say thet you ought to go to ther town, and thet yer ought ter have gone when Pawnee Bill went. And I say, furder——”

He was not given an opportunity to say anything further. Old Nebuchadnezzar, his homely, shaggy-headed horse, thrust out his nose, scented into the bushes, and then gave a jump and a squeal.

It was a warning; old Nebby was a veritable watchdog. But the warning came too late.

Before Nomad could seize his rifle, three men burst through the bushes, and each covered him with a revolver. They were Black John and two of his men, and two more came in sight a minute later.

“Surrender!”

Nomad was almost too chagrined for words. He knew that he was to blame for permitting these men to sneak on him undiscovered in that way, and hold him up at the point of the revolver.

Nebuchadnezzar bared his greenish teeth, and in another moment would have been at the throat of the nearest man.

“Whoa, Nebby!” Nomad yelled. He had seen the man pitch up a revolver, and knew that Nebby would get the bullet. He knew, too, that a bullet would be his own portion if he made an attempt to run.

“Ketched nappin’!” he said, lowering his rifle. “Yer aire too many fur me. But if I hadn’t been a fool, ’twouldn’t happened.”

Lena was too startled and too frightened for words. She stared at the masked outlaws, her eyes big and bright, her face turning white.

“Drop your gun!” Black John commanded.

Nomad looked at him hard, and let the rifle slide to the ground.

“I’m a fool, but I don’t skeer easy,” he said; “and I know who ye aire, old hoss, which I’ll say it if I never speak another word. Why don’t you take that devil’s han’k’cher off’n yer face?”

Black John came forward, holding his revolver in readiness.

“Keep him covered!” he called out. “Where’s the rest of your crowd?”

“Yer aire lookin’ at ther whole of them,” said Nomad. “Me and my daughter, hyar.”

“Oh, your daughter! Where’s Cody and Lillie?”

“I hesertates ter say, not knowin’.”

“They were with you a few moments ago. I reckon they’ve gone on toward the pass. Well, we’ll bag ’em there.”

“They ain’t sech fools as me,” said Nomad bitterly. “When I git through with this trail, I’m goin’ ter quit, and retire ter some quiet home fer men thet has lost their senses. If I’d had mine, you wouldn’t ketched me like this. But it’s all right; I’m old, and ain’t got too many years in this world, and you can’t skeer me. But I does ax yer to be easy wi’ ther gal.”

“Search her,” said Black John, to one of his men.

The masked bandit came forward.

“You’ve got some em’rulds,” said this rascal. “Fork ’em over, and save yerself trouble.”

“But I haven’t them!” she protested.

“Fork ’em over!” he shouted.

“I haven’t them. We left them behind; but where, I refuse to tell you.”

“Search her!” said Black John, grinning in a knowing way.

The man sprang upon the frightened girl, and the next moment it seemed that he would tear her clothing from her body.

It was too much for Nomad. Regardless of the revolvers leveled on him, he leaped to Lena’s aid. With a blow of his fist he laid the miscreant on the ground. At the same time his shrill whistle to Nebuchadnezzar sounded, and the old horse came jumping to his side.

“Git on him!” Nomad yelled to the girl, as he fought with another outlaw who assailed him.

Lena tried to obey, but her skirts were caught by the fallen rascal, and she was thrown down.

Black John came to the assistance of the man who was battling with Nomad, and in a few moments the old man was conquered; and then his hands were bound, while he was held down.

“Shoot him!” snarled the rascal who had been bowled over by Nomad’s gnarled fist.

“Not yit!” Black John commanded. He put up a hand for silence. “Mebbe that’ll draw Cody and Pawnee Bill,” he said; “and if they come we’ll have a fight, er mebbe we can capture ’em here. Listen!”

But if the sounds had reached Buffalo Bill, there was nothing to indicate it.

Nomad looked regretfully at the girl, who, frightened and trembling, was standing close by, one of the outlaws grasping her by the arm.

“Too bad, leetle gal,” he said; “but I’ve allus noticed thet storms never last, and thet bright weather allus comes after they’re over. It’s hard lines fer ye now, but better times is comin’.”

“Shut up!” commanded Black John, who was still hearkening for some sound of the approach of Buffalo Bill, and of Pawnee Bill, whom he thought with him.

Old Nebuchadnezzar, his bridle held by one of the masked men, was dancing in uneasiness and anger.

“Whoa, Nebuchadnezzar!” said Nomad. The uneasy horse gave him an idea. Nebby was within a yard of him, and on Nebby’s back was his old, high-horned saddle. Nomad’s feet were not yet bound, though that would come soon, he knew.

The shrill whistle, in a different key, rose from his lips. He jumped to the horse and threw his bound hands up, so that the cords which held his wrists together hooked over the saddle horn.

Nebuchadnezzar gave so shrill a squeal that it was almost a scream, and at the same time gave a jump and lunge which hurled to the ground the man who was holding the bridle.

The man tried to cling to the rein and stop the furious old horse, but Nebuchadnezzar trod him under foot; and the next moment he was “running away,” with old Nomad swinging along, supported by the saddle horn.

The old man had not taken time to get into the saddle—had feared to try that—but was hoping the horse would bear him beyond the outlaws, and that he could in some manner escape.

Black John and some of the other outlaws pitched up their revolvers; but instantly Black John lowered his.

“Don’t shoot!” he said, for he did not want to send such an alarm to Buffalo Bill. He had the girl, whom he had desired, and as for old Nomad, he did not care much about him, one way or another. Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill he desired to capture, or to kill. Hence his caution.

“Don’t shoot!” he said again.

“But he’s gittin’ away!”

“Let him go! He’s no good to us, anyhow. But Cody and Pawnee Bill will be comin’ back here purty soon, in answer to that racket. They’ll want to see what it means, an’ we’ll rake ’em in right here, if the boyees down at the pass don’t do it. Down with you fellers, and git the horses back; and don’t one of ye so much as breathe. Here, young lady, come with me, and keep yer handsome mouth shet, er I’ll put a knife into it, by way of a gag.”

The escape of Nick Nomad had come with such stunning suddenness that Lena Forest could hardly credit it, and knew not what to do, or think.

When Black John seized her by the wrist and drew her back into the bushes, she did not at first make any resistance, but she began to struggle when she comprehended what this meant—the capture of Buffalo Bill.

“I shall cry out and warn him,” was her thought. “They can’t scare me enough to keep me from doing that.”

She was thinking, too, in a wild way, of Bruce, wondering where he was, for she had been sure he was with the road agents. Though she could not see their faces, she was certain these were the road agents who had held up the stage, and, therefore, that they were the same scoundrels who held Bruce a prisoner.

She forgot the torn and shocking condition of her dress, in her desire to warn Buffalo Bill. And lest the outlaws should gag her, or remove her to some other place, she tried to give them now as little trouble as possible. So she crouched down, as Black John ordered her to, and listened with the listening outlaws for some sound that would show Buffalo Bill was returning.

However, that sound did not come, nor was anything heard from the direction of the pass to indicate that the scout had fallen into the ambush laid for him there.

“Cuss him!” said Black John, breathing hard. “What’s happened, I wonder? He and Pawnee Bill ought to have heard that row, and be comin’ back.”

“We’ve got the gal, anyway,” said one of the rascals, with a grin; “and I’m believin’ she must have them em’rulds. If she ain’t, he has; and we’ll git ’em, er know why.”

The “he” referred to Bruce Clayton.

Still no sound reached them indicating the return of the two scouts.

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE EMERALDS GONE.

When Black John and his masked bandits had waited so long for the return of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill that their patience was worn out, they left the concealment of the bushes.

It was certain that the scouts had not fallen into the trap in the pass. If that had happened, rifle shots and the sounds of a conflict would have notified them.

Everywhere was a silence that was trying to Black John. Nomad had vanished as if into space; and, though they might have picked up and followed the trail of his horse, the outlaws did not think that would justify the loss of time necessary. They were more interested in the two scouts.

Leaving the bushes, and circling back by the route they had come in reaching them, taking their girl prisoner with them, they gained again the hillside, where the other outlaws were waiting for the scouts.

Toby Sam was much relieved when he saw his chief. He felt sure that for a time the danger of a fight had passed.

“Seen nothin’ o’ ’em,” was Black John’s question.

“Nary a hair,” said Toby Sam. “But you seem to have struck suthin’. We heerd a racket up there, and some of ther boys was fer goin’ ter see what it meant; but I told ’em to stay here. Orders is orders, and that’s what you tole us ter do.”

Clayton, who had been held in a hollow to the rear, was brought out, and Lena could not repress a cry when she beheld her lover. She marked his haggard face, but most she noted his bearing of courage and reliance. She would have rushed to him, but one of the bandits held her.

“Oh, Bruce! Bruce!” she cried.

“Cough up them em’rulds!” said one of the outlaws, “and then both o’ ye can go free.”

“Oh, do you mean it?” she cried, in a manner to make the bandits think she intended their instant surrender.

Black John opened his eyes, wondering if there were other emeralds of which he had no knowledge, and he listened for her further statement.

“I haven’t them,” she said, “as I’ve already told you; but I know where they are; and if you will really release us, I’ll gladly show you where they are. I’ll guide you to them. Oh, can I trust you? Will you let us go?”

She clasped her hands in agitation, and looked round on the masked faces.

“Can I trust you? Would you let us go, after getting those emeralds?”

“Young lady,” said Black John, “we would. Show us where they aire, and as soon as we git our fingers on ’em we’ll turn you loose.”

He wanted his men to see that he was “doing all he could to get the emeralds for them.”

He began to question the girl, and got from her a repetition of the statement that she would show them where the emeralds were concealed, on their promise to let her and Bruce Clayton go free.

She believed that Buffalo Bill and old Nomad could take care of themselves; and as for Pawnee Bill, she thought he was hurrying out of the country, on his way to Glendive. Her desire to secure the freedom of Bruce Clayton made her selfish, perhaps, in some points. The emeralds were as nothing to her, when compared with his safety.

Black John had taken a sudden and violent liking for the girl.

“I’ll cut loose from the others,” he told himself, “and slide; and when I do I’ll take the emeralds, and I’d like to take her. I suppose she’d make a rumpus, and all that, but what do I care? I can manage her; if no other way, I can whale her, like the Injuns do their squaws. I reckon that would fetch her to her senses. With the money them emeralds will bring, I could hide out in Mexico somewheres, and live like a prince, and never do no more work, ner run any more risk.”

Black John had as little knowledge of the heart of a true and refined woman as if he were an Indian. Such women as he had known were of the lower, coarser sort, and he judged all women by them.

“We’ll look round a bit,” he said to his men, for he had lost none of his craftiness, “and we’ll see what’s become of Buffalo Bill and his pard. And I wonder where that old trapper went to? That was a clever thing he done, I’ll say! Also, it was reckless; fer if we hadn’t been afraid to shoot we could have downed him and his horse dead easy!”

He took a couple of men and began to scout about, hoping to discover what had become of Pawnee Bill and Cody; but he saw nothing.

“Beats my time!” he said. “They was right over there and follerin’ our trail, but soon’s we laid a trap fer ’em they dropped out of sight. Yit I know that neither them ner their horses kin fly. And I don’t see that old trapper nowhere. He’s a smart one, and no mistake. I reckon he and that old horse o’ his aire hidin’ in some holler, and keepin’ as close to the grass and bushes as if they was a pair of rabbits.”

He spent almost an hour in this scouting trip, and returned with his companions no wiser than when he went.

Toby Sam was talking with the prisoners when Black John returned, and the prisoners seemed in remarkably good spirits.

Black John now moved his men along the backward way, but not on the backward trail, and was soon leaving the hillside and the pass behind him.

The girl kept her own counsel, and did not tell them that Pawnee Bill had departed for Glendive.

When the spot was reached, near the stage trail, where the emeralds had been concealed, she pointed it out to them.

Black John could not hide a grin. It was such a joke—when he had the emeralds in his pocket!

The bandits saw the fresh earth turned there, and began to dig with feverish energy. They reached the bottom of the hole, but found no emeralds.

Then their rage broke bounds; for, suddenly, they conceived the idea that from the first Lena Forest had deceived them.

If it had not been for Black John they would now have treated her outrageously, and might have shot her, and her lover as well.

Black John did not care for Clayton, but he meant to protect the girl. He put himself in front of her, and drew his revolver.

“Who’s the boss of this beehive?” he demanded harshly, fingering his pistol. “You’ll know that I am, if you try any rushin’. Stand back, there! And you, Toby Sam, shet yer yawp, er I’ll fill yer ugly mouth with bullets. Let’s hear what the girl’s got to say.”

They clamored for her to speak, but she was mystified, puzzled, chagrined.

“I saw them hidden there!” she said.

“Then somebody’s dug ’em up!” was the disgusted statement. “Somebody seen ’em hid here, and dug ’em up; and where they aire now ther Lord knows; but we’ve seen the last of them em’rulds, unless the young lady is lyin’.”

They stared at her, and at Black John, who stood in front of her.

“Mebbe we kin hit the trail of the feller that done it?” Black John suggested. He set to work to do that, but pointed out the trail of the scouts, instead of his own.

He could afford to laugh at these men, now that he had the gems. He was already wondering how he was to get away from them, and take the girl with him.

CHAPTER XL. CODY AND NOMAD.

Buffalo Bill had seen the movements of the outlaws under Black John, and had discovered the ambush laid for him on the hillside. He had heard the outcry made when Nomad escaped, and then he had caught a glimpse of the old trapper getting away, with his shaggy-headed horse.

The great scout was too wise to show himself; he was but one man, and the road agents numbered nearly a score. He was already satisfied that they were the mustangers, or that some of them were, and that the mustang catching was but a side issue, carried on chiefly for the purpose of blinding people to their real work.

The fact that old Nomad seemed to be dragged by his horse, instead of riding on the back of the animal, suggested trouble for the old man, though the scout did not understand the nature of it.

Buffalo Bill now concealed his horse in a hollow that was filled with bushes, and then on foot made his way in the direction of Nomad’s flight. He was worried about the safety of the girl, whom he had left with Nomad. More than ever he wished she would be tractable, and that she had started for Glendive with Pawnee Bill.

In going forward now, Buffalo Bill used the utmost carefulness.

The thick growth of bushes that covered the land except in spots, while offering him protection, screened as well much of the movements of the road agents, so that he was in constant danger of blundering into them at the most unexpected point.

His wariness, his keen eyesight, and trained hearing stood him in good stead.

He found the hoofprints of Nebuchadnezzar, and began to follow them. That the tracks were made by Nomad’s horse he knew from the fact that recently Nebuchadnezzar had broken a triangular piece out of his right fore hoof. The impression in the soil was unmistakable, to a man trained as the scout was in the fine art of trailing.

Half an hour or more afterward the scout saw indications that the old horse had entered a small grove, near a little stream. He could not see the horse in there, and he began to fear that here was an ambush. He knew Nebby might have run into a bunch of road agents in that grove and been captured, with his owner, and the road agents might be lying in wait for any friend of Nomad who followed his trail.

Standing off at a distance, concealed by trees and rocks, Buffalo Bill uttered the “cuckoo” cry of the little prairie-dog owl. It was a signal well understood by Nomad, when made in a peculiar way; and when from the grove there came an answering cry, the scout knew that in there no ambush existed.

“Hello!” he called, as he now boldly advanced.

“Thet you, Buffler?” came in a strained voice.

Nomad did not appear, and the thing seemed suspicious, so the scout went on, with revolver held ready for use.

When he had penetrated the grove, he found a strange state of affairs. Nomad lay on the ground, gasping, and almost breathless, his hands bound together at the wrist. The ground seemed torn up by his own efforts, for no enemy was to be seen. Close by stood old Nebuchadnezzar, looking at Nomad, and then turning his sad eyes on Buffalo Bill, as if to inquire the meaning of something he had not brain enough to fathom.

Buffalo Bill hurried forward and cut the cords from Nomad’s wrists. Nomad rolled over to a sitting position.

“Waugh!” he grunted, puffing his cheeks and blowing dirt out of his mouth. “Buffler, talk er ground hogs! I been ground-hoggin’ in the wust way ever. Fer an hour, seems ter me, I been kickin’ round hyar wuss’n any cussed grasshopper. Whar’d ye come frum? And shake! I never war so glad ter see anybody in all my bornd days!”

He extended his hand. The lines of the cords, where they had cut into his wrists, showed red, and deeply indented.

“Who tied you?” asked the scout, mystified, and glancing all around him. “I don’t see any trail here but yours.”

“Waugh! Let me git my wind, Buffler, and I’ll norate a tale fer ye that’ll make yer eyes bug out. I rid hyar bound thet way, and I didn’t ride in the saddle, nuther; couldn’t git up inter ther saddle.”

Then he told, in his own peculiar phraseology, of how he had been surprised and captured by the road agents, and of the manner of his singular escape, aided by Nebuchadnezzar.

“Thar never war yit another sech hoss, Buffler, on the top o’ ther airth!” he declared, with characteristic enthusiasm. “Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye; don’t git bashful and restless jes’ ’cause I’m praisin’ ye! Stan’ still, thar!” He looked lovingly at the homely old beast. “Nebby seen jes’ ther fix I war in, and he felt jes’ as bad as I did, and war jes’ as ’shamed o’ ther way we had been caught nappin’. And so he war ready fer somethin’ desprit, and he done it. I jes’ hooked my two tied hands over the horn o’ ther saddle and Nebby carried me off, same’s as if I war a bag o’ meal hooked onter him. It war ther greatest thing I ever knowed on, Buffler, an’ no mistake. But after Nebby’d done his part, I still seemed ter be not much better off. I got my hands from over the saddle horn, but I couldn’t ontie ’em. I tried to gnaw ther cords loose, but my ole teeth has seen their best days, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t break ther cords, and thar I war; fer, smart as Nebby is, I couldn’t nowise git him ter do anything. I tried ter git him ter bite at ther cords, but he wouldn’t, and jes’ stood lookin’ at me, wonderin’ what kind of a crazy fit I war havin’; fer I war shore pawin’ up ther ground suthin’ dreadful, in tryin’ ter git myself free.”

The old trapper told what he knew of the girl who had been left behind in the power of the road agents, and of the road agents themselves; though this last was little enough, and largely guesswork, as he had not seen their faces.

The scout saw that some strenuous and perilous work was cut out for him. At all hazards, Lena must be rescued, and her lover as well.

“We’ll have to lie low a while,” he said to Nomad. “We’ll strike their trail after they’ve gone on, and then we’ll do what we can.”

Old Nomad made a grimace.

“Buffler, I feels like lyin’ low fer a week; fer I’m thet stiff and sore thet every inch o’ me feels as ef it had been beat with an ox whip. I reckon I’ve got you to thank fer my life, too; fer, try as I would, I couldn’t git rid of them cords on my wrists. And, gee, but them wrists aire hurtin’ yit!”

They were red and swollen, and very painful.

From the top of the nearest hill, to which he climbed with great carefulness, Buffalo Bill viewed, as well as he could, the surrounding country. He saw the road agents under Black John moving off in the direction of the stage trail. It surprised him, and for a time puzzled him; then he hit on what seemed to him the true solution.

“They’ve forced Lena Forest to tell them where the emeralds are buried, and they’re going to get them. Too bad! But I don’t see how it’s to be prevented now. Of course, no one can blame her for telling, when, no doubt, she was threatened, and frightened.”

He surveyed the returning cavalcade with his field glasses; and saw the two prisoners in the midst of the outlaws.

As he lay thus on the top of the hill, he saw on another hill, some distance away, a horseman appear. He swung the glasses around and pointed them at this horseman, while a cry of surprise broke from his lips.

“Pawnee Bill!”

And Pawnee Bill was supposed to be at that moment speeding on his way to Glendive!

Deeming it safe to do so, Buffalo Bill stood up and waved his hat about his head. But the signal was not observed by Pawnee Bill, who was looking at Black John’s men.

Buffalo Bill saw the horseman begin to descend from the hill, with the apparent intention of following the road agents.

Therefore, he quickly climbed down himself, and returned in haste to Nomad with his astonishing news.

The scout and Nomad rode out of the grove, and, following swiftly in the course taken by Pawnee Bill, soon overtook him. He was not at all surprised to see them.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “From the top of that high hill away over there I saw, with my glasses, that something had gone wrong; and so I back-tracked, and here I am. What’s the news?”

They had enough to tell him, of a surprising character.

“I guess it was Nomad’s fight and capture that I saw,” he said. “As you are both all right, perhaps I’d better go on again. I came back because I thought likely I was needed.”

As, in pursuing the road agents now, toward the stage trail, the scouts were really going somewhat in the direction of Glendive, Pawnee Bill kept with them.

Before the stage trail was reached they saw the bandits returning, still with their prisoners.

Night was at hand.

Black John had got rid of most of his men, having only six or eight with him now, among them Toby Sam. Little by little he was reducing his force, sending men here and there on various pretexts. In this manner, he thought to get rid of them all, by and by, and have the prisoners himself; when he meant to put the young man out of the way, and fly with the young woman and the emeralds.

The fact that Black John’s force had been reduced caused a change of plan on the part of the scouts.

It was decided that it was not necessary to send Pawnee Bill on to Glendive for assistance, but that the wisest course now was for the three pards to remain together, and, in the darkness, try to get at the prisoners and release them. Therefore, when they fell in behind Black John’s party, and began to follow this trail, they kept a sharp outlook ahead, expecting that soon he would go into camp for the night, when they would endeavor to put their plan of rescue into execution.

But Black John did not go into camp. He pushed straight on in the gathering darkness. Before coming to the region where he might expect to encounter Buffalo Bill, he shifted his course to miss him and then hurried on again.

Black John’s carelessness of pursuit enabled the scouts to keep pretty close to him, after darkness fell, and still not reveal themselves.

Hour after hour Black John and his men held on their way.

After a while he became suspicious, apparently, having heard the pursuers, and dropped a scout back as a rear guard; thus forcing Buffalo Bill and his companions to halt.

When this rear guard went on again, he rode rapidly for some rendezvous, failing to rejoin Black John; and soon the scouts were bewildered in the darkness, and almost lost the trail.

For a time after that they sat still on their horses, trying to hear some sound indicating the direction of Black John’s retreat. Unable to do this, they were forced to begin a search for hoofprints; but they lost time in picking up the trail, and when it was found they could not follow it rapidly. They held to it, however, with much pertinacity, though falling rapidly behind the road agents.

When morning came, after an all-night ride, that, in their experience, had few equals in weariness, they were still on the trail, but miles behind. They ignored their weariness, when they saw the trail stretching straight on before them, and pressed their horses into a swift gallop, after a brief stop for water and grazing, and for food for themselves.

“Buffler,” said Nomad, as they started on, “we hangs to this hyar trail till ther last hoss is dead!”

CHAPTER XLI. THE OUTLAWS TRICKED.

Black John had got rid of all but six of his men, one of those remaining being Toby Sam. The others he had dispatched on various missions, and in that manner he meant to dispose of them all, one by one.

His horses were nearly exhausted now; he had ridden hard through the night, and all through the hours of the forenoon, and the previous day the horses had little rest.

Lena Forest was almost in a state of collapse, from exhaustion; and Bruce Clayton was not in much better state. His hands being tied together, and his feet tied under the belly of his horse, so cramped him that at times he suffered not only from fatigue, but such intense pain that it was torture.

Little Black John cared for these things. He had an iron frame that resisted fatigue, and his men were as hardened to such things as himself.

But the exhausted horses had reached a point where their speed was little better than a walk, and soon they would be unable to go on.

Even Black John had a mental vision of pursuers hot on his trail. At this juncture, it seemed to him a godsend, when he beheld a number of horses grazing in a little valley, through which ran the trail he was following.

“Mustangs!” he said. “What luck!”

He and his companions drew rein and looked down at the horses. More than a dozen in number, with heads down, not apparently having seen the horsemen, they presented a tempting sight to the eyes of Black John and his comrades.

During the night, grown reckless and tired of wearing them, Black John and his companions had removed the half masks that had concealed and disfigured their countenances, and stood revealed to the prisoners in their true persons. It was an intimation to the prisoners that they could not hope to escape, and that death, or worse, awaited them.

“There’s a cañon over there,” said Black John, as he studied the mustangs and their situation. “If we could herd ’em into the mouth o’ that, and then rush ’em, and drive ’em into it, we could ketch some of ’em. And we’ve got to have some new horses.”

He knew the region, and knew that this cañon became choked and ended less than a mile back of its opening; so that, if the horses could be forced into it, they would fall easy victims to the mustangers.

Acting on Black John’s suggestions, his men spread out, several hundred yards apart, and began to move down into the valley.

Black John kept the prisoners with him, and close by him was Toby Sam.

So certain were the mustangers that the horses they saw were wild ones that the only care they used was in endeavoring to ride upon them in such a way as to throw them toward the mouth of the cañon.

But when the bandits had ridden so close that they began to wonder at the fact that the mustangs did not race away in fright, there was a sudden and startling transformation.

An Indian appeared on the back of each of the “mustangs;” an Indian striped and painted hideously, armed with feathered lance and rifle. These redskins charged the white men, with hideous yells.

Black John uttered an oath of amazement, and jerked his tired horse around. He stretched forth a hand to catch the bridle rein of the horse ridden by Lena Forest. He saw his comrades lashing their jaded animals, in efforts to escape, and saw the redskins riding upon them.

An Indian chief rode toward him, with rifle uplifted.

Black John dropped the bridle rein of the girl’s horse, and, drawing his revolver, he rode to meet the chief, firing upon him. He saw the chief tumble to the ground, with a bullet in his forehead.

Black John was really a capable fighter, the natural leader of the wild men he grouped about him.

Another Indian was coming toward him, and this Indian he shot out of the saddle.

But by this time the horse ridden by the girl was galloping off at its best gait, and was really going fast, for fright gave it renewed strength.

With a running leap, Black John sprang to the back of one of the Indian ponies, and then tried to catch the other.

Several Indians rushing upon him compelled him to abandon his attempt to capture the second pony.

He yelled defiance at them, as they shot at him and hurled their lances; and, with backward shots from his revolver, he rode away at a furious pace, following the girl.

He saw that several of his men were down, that others were fighting with Indians, while still others were, like himself, riding away for safety.

The chase that followed was a hot one, and Black John was pressed hard; but the pony he now had under him was fast, and he did not spare it. He overtook the girl, shouting to her to stop. When she did not, he rode up beside her galloping horse. Then he fairly lifted her from its back, throwing her against his side; and, holding her there by main strength, he galloped furiously on.

“Git up behind me!” he shouted. “If you don’t, you’ll tumble, and it will be the worse for you.”

She was too weak to obey him; her mind, also, revolted at the thought of going farther with him. She preferred to fall to the ground, and meet death there.

In desperation, Black John stopped his horse, and shifted her to its back, in front of him.

“You go with me,” he said. “D’ye want them Injuns to git ye? You’re a fool, if ye do!”

The Indian pursuers were coming up rapidly; but again Black John urged on the plucky mustang, and found it so superior as a runner that it again drew away from the Indians, in spite of its double burden.

Lena was in a fainting condition by this time. Weakened by the terrible exertions she had been forced to undergo, and by the mental agony she had endured, she had no strength of mind or body left.

Black John was separated now from all of his men. Some of them were down, killed by the redskins; the others were in flight. Even Toby Sam was no longer near him.

“’Twon’t be so bad,” was his thought, “if I can only git away from the Injuns. Whatever turns up later, I’ll have a good excuse to give for sep’rating myself from the boyees. I’m hopin’ I’ll never meet any of ’em again, to make an explanation needful, but if I should I’ve shorely got it now. But them cussed Injuns!”

He looked back, and saw several redskins still chasing him, and he knew if they stuck to it long enough they would probably tire down his pony, for, in the long run, the double burden would tell on it. When that came, he knew he would have to fight the Indians.

“But they’ll think they’ve struck a rattler if they crowd me!” was his grim thought.

He drove his spurs into the sides of the mustang. Unused to such things, it jumped forward, with a squeal of pain, greatly adding to its speed.

“I’ll make it,” was the thought of the ruffian. “And what more can I want? I’ve got the emeralds and the girl, and I’ve got rid of the fellers that might be inclined to make trouble—would shorely make trouble if they knowed I had the emeralds. I’ll hit some trail runnin’ into Mexican territory, and git out of the country. And then!”

He looked at the white face of the girl, who had fallen limp in his villainous arms.

CHAPTER XLII. A ROUGH DIPLOMAT.

When Lena Forest came to a full realization of her changed position, she was alone with Black John.

About them were rugged hills, hemming in a little valley, where the captured Indian pony was grazing.

Black John had gone into camp there, and was cooking some meat he had found on the Indian pony. He was not only tired, but by this time ravenously hungry.

“Don’t be skeered,” he said, when he discovered that Lena was taking note of her surroundings. “I don’t mean any harm to ye, not in the least.”

She started up, staring about; then turned to him. Her face was corpselike in its pallor, and she swayed as she stood up.

“Then, why did you bring me here; and why keep me here?” she said. “Why don’t you join your men?”

Black John stooped to sniff the roasting meat before replying.

“Now I’ll tell ye,” he said; “and mebbe you won’t think it’s so bad. I was your friend from the very first, but didn’t darst show it. The men wanted you, and wanted your emeralds. What become of the emeralds I don’t know, and jes’ now I don’t know where the other men aire. They was scattered in that rumpus with the Injuns. You recollect the Injuns, and what fools we was, in ridin’ up on ’em?”

He stroked his beard, ruminating.

“The boys was scattered by the Injuns. I got one of the Injun ponies, and we come here on it; and I reckon we’re safe enough fer a while.”

“Won’t you leave me here,” she begged, “or take me back to my friends?”

“What friends?”

“Mr. Cody, and—and the men who were with him. You don’t know where Bruce Clayton is?”

“Nary, I don’t. He was with our crowd, when the Injuns hit us; but where he went, and what become of him, I don’t know no more than you do.” He inspected the meat. “Won’t you have somethin’ to eat?” he asked, taking it from the fire and poking into it with his knife. “This belonged to the Injun that owned the mustang, but I reckon as he meant to eat it himself he didn’t pizen it. You look’s if you needed to eat somethin’.”

“I couldn’t swallow a mouthful,” she protested. “Won’t you please let me go, and let me try to find my way back?”

“That’s foolish, don’t ye think? Better eat some o’ this meat. It’s good, and you need the stren’th it’ll give ye. Let me carve ye out a bit of it.”

She protested again that she could not eat.

The outlaw seemed to want to argue the matter with her. What he really wanted was to hear her talk, for he liked her voice, and to make her forget if possible her condition. He was wondering how he could gain her good will, and perhaps her liking. His ideas of women were singular. He did not see why this girl might not come to like him as much as he now liked her.

“I’ve seen sich,” he told himself. “Put a couple o’ strange dogs together, and they’ll fight like time; but after they git acquainted they’re li’ble to be the best of friends. And other animals the same way. Why not humans?”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, beginning to eat the roasted meat. “I’ll try to find yer friends for ye, and hand you over to ’em.”

She sprang up and came toward him, wildly excited.

“Oh, if you will—if you will!”

He smiled into her flushed face.

“That’s what I’ll do. I dunno where they aire, and them Injuns may have struck ’em and even wiped ’em out. I don’t think they did, though. So, we’ll begin to look fer ’em right off. But if you’re to try that, or try to do anything, you’ll need to do some eatin’. You can’t go on much longer if you don’t. We’re stoppin’ here to give you a chanct to rest, and the pony needs rest, too. The pony’s fillin’ up on grass, showin’ how sensible he is.”

She shook her head, when he held out some of the meat to her.

“But if you don’t, why, ’tain’t no use fer you to try to do anything. If you’re to find yer friends, you’ve got to have some stren’th, so that you can do ridin’.”

“You’ll help find my friends?”

“Why, cert’in; ain’t I said so?”

“And Bruce?”

“Yes; we’ll look fer him, too. I see you don’t understand my position?”

“No, I don’t,” she confessed frankly.

“Well, as I said, I was friendly toward you from the first, but couldn’t do anything because of the other boys. I had to seem rough to ye, on account of that.”

“You were the boss—the leader?”

“No, you’re mistaken; Toby Sam was the real boss.” He held out the meat.

“Eat it, and you’ll feel better; and when we go on you’ll be in better shape to do the ridin’ we’ve got to do if we strike them friends of yours, if they’re livin’.”

She took the meat, and began to eat it.

“That’s right,” said he, smiling encouragement. “Now, as I said, I couldn’t do anything so long as t’others was with me. But sense I’m alone I can do as I please. You’ll find I’m not sich a bad man as you’ve prob’bly been thinkin’.”

They rested by the stream nearly an hour. At the end of that time Black John ascended the near-by hill to take a look over the country. He came down hurriedly, and was much excited.

“Injuns!” he said. “We’ve got to slide out of this mighty quick, er we won’t be goin’ at all. Wish’t I had another horse fer ye, but you’ll have to ride in front of me, same’s before.”

He helped her to mount, and she assisted herself very materially, for, believing him, she was anxious to get out of the valley. Then they rode away hastily, heading once more southward.

She noted the direction.

“This takes me farther and farther from my friends!” she protested. “We’re riding southward!”

“Yes, but when Injuns aire in the trail right behind us we ain’t much choice as to the direction we take. The thing to do is to move as fast as we can out of the territory. We’ve got a start of ’em; yit I’m expectin’ to hear their yells soon.”

What Black John had really seen from the top of the hill was Buffalo Bill and his friends, coming toward the valley at a fast gallop, following his trail.

CHAPTER XLIII. A WHIRLWIND CHASE.

Following hard on the trail of Black John and his companions, Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, and Nick Nomad came to the point where Black John’s men had been fooled by the Indians.

Several bodies, scalped and mutilated, told their own story.

Indian pony tracks were numerous, and all the evidences of a surprise and a fight.

Such “signs” were easy to read by men as experienced as Buffalo Bill and his comrades.

While examining this small battle ground, they heard a feeble shout, and then beheld a young man ride out of a timbered gorge and come toward them.

The man was Bruce Clayton.

His hands were still tied behind his back, and his feet were bound together beneath the pony’s body. He was almost paralyzed from the constriction of the cords, and the fact that he had been in that painful position so long.

He had been unable to guide his horse, except by pressure of his knees, when the Indian surprise and attack came, and so the animal had chosen its own course, dashing away in wild fright.

It bore him into this gorge, and on into the midst of a growth of brushy timber, some distance from the mouth of the gorge. There, by voice alone, he had been able to check it.

For some reason, perhaps because they were pursuing other men, the Indians did not follow him, and he remained there undisturbed a long time, wondering what he ought to do, or could do. He was unable to release himself.

By and by the horse grazed its way back to the mouth of the gorge. Then the unhappy prisoner was able to ride forth, guiding with his knees, and make his predicament known.

Buffalo Bill lost no time in cutting away the cords that had held Clayton so long to the back of the pony.

The youth had to be helped from the saddle. When he began to talk, it was seen that his mental sufferings had been as great as his physical. He told them of the surprise by the Indians, and of what had followed, so far as he had been able to see it. And he also told of his own adventures and experiences.

“Lena was with that leader when I saw her last,” he said. “But I haven’t any idea where she is now. I fear the worst.”

In spite of their desire to hasten on, the scouts remained there a long time, a thing which gave Black John a good start.

They could not go on with Clayton until his physical condition was improved, nor could they hope to accomplish much until they had gained something like accurate knowledge of what had become of the girl.

To the task of learning this last, Buffalo Bill and Pawnee bent their utmost skill, leaving old Nomad to minister to the needs of Clayton.

The scouts had long before picked out the individual trail of the horse ridden by Black John; but now that he had secured an Indian pony, they were put to their wits’ ends to know what to do.

After much searching they came on a bit of evidence that was of the utmost value. It was a piece of cloth torn by a thorny bush from Lena’s dress. There could be no mistaking it, nor how it came to be there.

By this thorny bush they found pony tracks, heading southward. They studied these tracks, until they were sure they should know them when seen anywhere; for, to the experienced eye of the plainsman, there is as much difference between the tracks made by different ponies as there is between the penmanship of different men.

When they had done this much, and had followed the trail some distance, they returned to where old Nomad was caring for Bruce Clayton.

The brief rest had done a world of good for the young man. He had walked by the stream, and so had got the stiffness and half paralysis out of his body and limbs. He was still “sore as a boil,” as he expressed it, but he had had something to eat and drink; and in his anxiety he now declared that he was himself again, and was ready to go on, wherever the scouts went.

He was much encouraged by the report brought in by his friends, the two scouts. He looked anxiously at the shred of cloth which they showed, and then asked if he might have it.

“I may never see her again!” he said simply, as he put it away in his pocket.

Bruce’s horse was also in better condition now, and was almost as strong as the worn horses of the scout and his pards.

Buffalo Bill was anxious to push on, now that he felt sure they had found the trail of the pony that had borne the girl away.

Whether the man who was supposed to be with her on that pony’s back was Black John, or some one else, they, of course, did not know.

In spite of the jaded condition of the horses, the chase that followed was really of a whirlwind character, as the previous one had been. If their quarry were Black John, they hoped to bring him in sight soon, and they drove their horses on without much mercy.

As has been seen, at a time when Black John began to feel safe, he had found that these human bloodhounds were on his track and coming up rapidly.

On gaining the valley where Black John had stopped to rest and cook some food, the evidences of his presence there was so fresh, and the signs of his quick flight so plain, that Buffalo Bill was sure he was not far ahead. Moreover, as his horse was carrying double, and was tired, as its trail showed, they began confidently to believe that in a short time they would be able to overhaul him and force him to surrender his fair prisoner.

“Crowd ’im, Buffler!” said Nomad, with youthful enthusiasm. “We’re goin’ ter drive him inter a hole now mighty quick.”

The next moment he was belaboring old Nebuchadnezzar, to get greater speed out of him.

Thus they swept along, riding hard on the trail of the fugitive.

The Indian pony took to a rocky gorge, where its hoofprints were not easily followed; but, as it could not have left the gorge, they rode straight on at top speed.

“Go ’long, Nebby, you ole crow bait!” said Nomad. “Hyar I’ve allus been braggin’ on you bein’ a reg’lar bird with wings, when it come ter runnin’, and now you’re hurtin’ my feelin’s by turnin’ inter a snail. Go ’long!”

They came in sight of the pony they were pursuing, at a bend in the gorge, and they almost reeled in their saddles when they saw it, so great was their astonishment.

The pony was riderless!

“Waugh!” Nomad roared, drawing rein and staring stupidly. “Whar’s ther man and ther gal?”

No one could answer his question.

CHAPTER XLIV. LAWLESS STRATEGY.

Black John was no fool. In fact, he was both shrewd and clever, and possessed a foxlike instinct that stood him in good stead now.

When he discovered that Buffalo Bill and three other men were near and coming on rapidly, he rode swiftly out of the valley, with the girl before him, telling her that he had sighted Indians. His frightened manner and frantic haste made her believe he told the truth.

She had no desire to fall again into the hands of Indians. Her experience with Lightfoot was vivid in her memory, causing her to shudder at the recollection. Much as she detested her captor, to be Lightfoot’s prisoner again would be worse; and now that Black John was promising to convey her to her friends without delay, she was beginning to believe in his sincerity. She did not, therefore, make objection when he bore her away in front of him on the pony.

He turned into the gorge after a sharp run. His manner in doing it would have shown her that the country there was familiar to him, if she had been experienced in judging of such things.

When he had ridden at top speed some distance into the gorge, over rocky ground which left no hoofprints, he drew rein and leaped down.

“We can baffle ’em, I think,” he said, lifting her from the horse, “if we move lively now. Redskins aire purty hard ter fool, but I think I can fool these red gentlemen handsome.”

He looked about a moment, then pulled a leaf of thorny cactus and thrust it under the saddle girth.

The pain of the cactus caused the horse to rear and plunge. “Go on with ye now!” he said. “Git!” He gave it a heavy slap, which started it along the trail. The pricking of the cactus caused it to continue on at a headlong gallop.

“Quick, now!” he said, taking the girl by the hand.

She yielded her hand willingly. She was trembling, frightened, and almost breathless, and her limbs were quaking under her, so that she could hardly stand.

“I’ll help ye!” he said encouragingly, pulling her along, up the rocky slope.

When she stumbled, as she did, now and then, his hand sustained her from falling; and when places were reached which she was too weak to surmount he lifted her in his arms.

Ordinarily she would not have submitted in this way without taking pains to verify his statements; but she had suffered so much physically and mentally that she had lost the faculty of clear judgment. Fear ruled her now more than anything else.

The iron frame of Black John seemed impervious to fatigue. He scaled the rocky slope as sure-footed as a mountain goat. At times he almost ran, even though he carried the girl and the rocks were formidable.

Before Buffalo Bill and his party reached the pony and discovered that it had been abandoned. Black John was over the high ridge out of sight, and descending rapidly toward a valley of which he knew. In his work as a mustanger, and also long before, he had been all through that region; so that he knew every hole and corner of it. He headed now toward a deep gorge, which he followed up some distance, and which led him by and by into a cozy nest, between green hills. Here there was a small cave, in which more than once he had spent a night, and below this cave, and not distant, was a spring of water.

“If we had somethin’ to eat,” he said, when they had gained this hiding place, “we could lay by here a week, until them redskins git tired and clear out of the country. I don’t think they’ll find us here. The way we come was so rocky that a bloodhound couldn’t hit the trail and stick to it.”

He laughed with cool assurance.

As for the girl, she sank down in the cave, tired out and again hopeless.

If they should be cooped up there by Indians any length of time, she fancied that the chance of meeting or finding Buffalo Bill and his companions would be small. And as for Bruce—she shivered when she thought of his possible fate, for she could not rid herself of the fear that he had fallen into the hands of the Indians.

During the night which followed, Black John lay with his rifle out beyond the mouth of the cave, watching for the coming of his enemies, not daring to sleep.

He believed he was safe, but he was not sure of it. Buffalo Bill was a hard man to shake off, when once he set out to run any one down.

During that wakeful night Black John amused and occupied himself by planning his future with the girl whom he now believed he could deceive. He fancied he had gained her confidence, and that she was beginning to like him, and that promised well. He thought, too, that the girl was soundly sleeping throughout the night; but in this he was mistaken, for she slept very little. At the first faint light of day she had crept to the cave entrance and looked out.

She saw Black John lying on the ground by a rock, not far off. That he was not asleep she observed by his occasional movement; so she slipped out to where he was, intending to ask him some questions. Before she reached him she stopped, stupefied with astonishment.

Black John had taken the buckskin bag from his inner pocket, poured the emeralds on the ground, and was looking them over, hefting and scanning them, and estimating their worth.

The cry of the girl aroused him.

She had crept forward until she was right at his elbow, and now she jumped at the gems, and tried to heap them together in her hands. Her voice and manner were hysterical.

“You scoundrel!” she gasped. “You lied to me! You said——”

He clutched her and pushed her back with an oath, and many of the emeralds fell to the ground.

Her act, and the fact that his duplicity had been discovered, enraged him. He threw her to the ground, and, drawing his revolver, seemed on the point of shooting her; but he thought better of it, and began to pick up the fallen emeralds. She still clutched and held a few of them.

“Gimme them!” he commanded angrily.

“You lied to me!” she said.

“What if I did? Gimme them emeralds!”

“Where did you get them?”

“That’s none of your affair; give ’em to me.”

“I won’t. They’re mine, and not yours.”

“Then I’ll take ’em!” he cried, with another oath.

He sprang upon her, threw her down, and by sheer strength and brutal roughness took the gems from her. Then he stood off regarding her. Dropping the gems into the bag, he closed it, and thrust it into his pocket.

“See here!” he said, in a harsh tone, “I’m taking care of you, and I expect to pay myself by keepin’ these, and by keepin’ you!”

“What do you mean?” she gasped.

“I dunno as I could make the words plainer. I intend to keep these, and to keep you.” He picked up his revolver. “So you might as well understand it fust as last. There ain’t goin’ to be any cry-baby bizness allowed here. I saved you from them Injuns, and——”

“I believe you lied to me in that, too!”

“Well, I didn’t! If I hadn’t hustled with you, and got away from ’em, your purty scalp would be soon dryin’ in some Injun lodge; and that wouldn’t be pleasant for you. Now see here!”

He stood before her, large, uncouth, malevolent; a very brute of a man, whose sheer brutal strength was enough to overawe and reduce to subjection even a reasonably strong man.

“Now see here! I ain’t goin’ to fool with you! You’re goin’ to do the things I say. I’ve got these emeralds, and I’ve got you. Jes’ as soon as it’s safe, I’m goin’ to make fer the Mexican line. Once across it, I know plenty good hidin’ places. I’ll treat you well, if you’ll let me; if you don’t let me treat ye well, that’s your own fault, not mine. You’re goin’ to live with me from this on as my wife.”

She uttered a scream, and drew back.

He laughed; he knew she could not get away.

“Hurts yer feelin’s, does it? Well, it needn’t. I’ve seen worse-lookin’ men than I am.”

“But never such a villain!”

“Yes; even worse villains. I ain’t sich a bad lot. I’ve taken a likin’ to you. You’re good lookin’, and, of course, you know it. We’ll go together into Mexico, where we’ll hide till it’s safe to git out somewheres else. You’ll live with me as my wife, freely if you will, but you’ll live with me jes’ the same. And I’ll treat you well. These emeralds will be as much yourn as mine—that is, the things they buy will. And they’ll make us independent. I’ve done some things that will make me want to hide away from the law for a while. By the time we can go forth and look the world in the eye—the Mexican world, mind ye!—you’ll not be keerin’ much whether you’re married to me or not; for by that time you’ll think I’m a purty good sort of a feller. I know women. What they need is a good whalin’, whenever they think they know it all and want to be boss of the ranch. The Injuns have the right of it. Whale a squaw and she’s obedient. And I reckon it’s the same with a white woman.”

“Never!” she cried, starting up. “Before I would be your wife—the wife of such a scoundrel—I’d kill myself!”

“Ho, ho!” he said, with a roar of laughter. “A tantrum like that is what I guess I’ll like to see occasionally; it makes you purtier than any picture.”

CHAPTER XLV. A SNEAKING COWARD.

The terror and horror of that day with Black John at the cave was enough to bring a shudder to Lena. He was truculent and brutal. Having no longer necessity to make him pretend to be what he was not, he did not hesitate to frighten her, apparently for the mere pleasure it gave him.

One thing, however, held him somewhat in check; and that was her screams, when he became too violent and too brutal. Unless he tied and gagged her, the only way to keep her from screaming in terror when he spoke too roughly to her was to keep away from her, and permit her to have her own way. She could not escape, for he was out in front of the cave, was armed, and possessed such strength that she was helpless before him.

Black John’s desire for quiet in and about the cave was caused by his fear of Buffalo Bill and his pards.

Though he still maintained to the girl the fiction that he had fled with her from Indians, and was hiding from Indians, a thing on which she was now skeptical, he did not believe Indians were near, in spite of the surprising attack they had made.

His fears of Buffalo Bill mounted high. Hence, throughout nearly the whole of that long and wearing day he lay out on the slope before the cave, watching the surrounding hills, and the little pass from the gorge, by which he had reached this point.

He lay almost motionless, too, knowing that to move about was to risk being seen; while, when he remained still, his clothing blended in with the dark rock and protected him.

Nevertheless, he was seen, as night came on, not by Buffalo Bill and his friends, but by that sneaking coward, Toby Sam. Toby Sam knew of this cave, and had been in it more than once with Black John; and he, too, had fled toward it for safety after that Indian attack.

Toby Sam’s caution made him mount to an eminence and carefully inspect the surroundings of the cave before venturing near it.

Knowing just where to look, his keen eyes saw Black John sprawled at full length on the slope, and the little glint of sunshine which fell on Black John’s revolver.

“Ho, ho!” he said. “Wonder who else is there? I’ll jes’ see.”

Toby Sam was afoot, having abandoned his horse after he had ridden it nearly to death. He drew back, so that Black John could not see him, and then carefully picked his course in roundabout fashion to the cave.

The sun had set by that time. Still Toby Sam, being a cautious rascal, did not make his presence known. He was by nature a sneak, as well as a coward, and he sneaked now upon the man in front of the cave.

When not far off and on the point of making his presence known to Black John, who seemed to be alone, he heard Black John speak to the girl.

It made Toby Sam’s cowardly heart jump with a queer thrill, when he knew that Black John was speaking of the emeralds.

The girl had said something of an accusing nature, apparently, and Black John replied:

“Shet up about the emeralds! They’re mine, and I propose to git a lot of money out of ’em; and on that money we’ll live high.”

Toby Sam flattened himself against the rocks like a lizard when he heard that, for he knew that Black John had the emeralds, and he desired to get them. He remained there without movement until darkness had set in fully; then, with infinite patience and tortoiselike slowness, he made an advance.

Black John went into the cave and came out again. He was swearing, and was in an ugly mood. Being hungry had made him ill-tempered.

“A cuss on the emeralds,” he said, “I’d trade the very biggest of ’em fer a mouthful o’ somethin’ to eat! I dunno but I’d better try to git out o’ this to-night, fer to stay here long will be to starve to death.”

The moon came from behind a cloud while Black John sat in front of the cave; and then Toby Sam saw that he had the precious bag of emeralds out, and was toying with the gems, all of which he had picked up again.

For a long time Black John sat there, sometimes muttering, sometimes as silent as the rocks. Finally he lay down, with revolver in his hand, again to watch, as he had done the previous night.

For another hour Toby Sam remained as still as if he had frozen into position.

Black John’s wakefulness of the night before, and his lack of rest for so many hours, had told on him at last; and Toby Sam heard him snore.

The time for action had come.

With his cowardly heart knocking against his ribs, Toby Sam began a stealthy movement toward the sleeping man. Only his wild anxiety to possess those emeralds could thus have urged him on.

A mouse advancing could not have made less noise.

Within five minutes the deed was done; Toby Sam had felt over the body of the sleeping man, and had possessed himself of the buckskin bag that had bulged the inner pocket of Black John’s coat.

Black John awoke, with a snort, before Toby Sam had gone ten yards in his sly retreat. Perhaps some dim recognition of what had happened had come to disturb him. He rolled over, stretched out his arms, breathed heavily, and then sat up.

Toby Sam had become as silent as the very ground on which he lay, and his body seemed no more than a portion of it.

Black John did not at once discover the loss of the buckskin bag; but, being uneasy, he rose and walked away from the cave, swinging his revolver, and peering out along the slopes where the cloud-dimmed moonlight lay.

Toby Sam took advantage of this to worm along several yards farther; but again he lay still when Black John returned to the mouth of the cave. Then Black John discovered that the bag of emeralds was gone.

It was so unbelievable a thing that at first he felt in his other pockets, thinking he must have misplaced it. Then a great but subdued oath ripped from his lips. He ran to the mouth of the cave, and peered in.

Worn out, the girl was asleep, close by the entrance.

Black John stooped down, plucked her by the hair, and, with a jerk that awoke her and brought from her a scream of pain and fright, he pulled her to her feet.

Toby Sam was sliding away with eellike silence and speed.

“Hand over them emeralds!” Black John demanded of the terrified girl, as he pulled her out of the cave, ignoring, in his rage, the danger which would come from the screams that she uttered. He threw her down on the ground and kicked her.

“Hand over them emeralds!” he cried, standing above her. “Hand ’em over!”

She screamed again, and put up her hands.

“You thought you’d play a cute trick on me, eh? Thought you’d sneak ’em out o’ my pocket, and then maybe, hide ’em, and pretend to be asleep when I looked in on ye? Hand ’em over!”

“I haven’t got them; I don’t know——”

“Oh, ye don’t!” he drew his revolver. “This’ll help you to recklect! Hand ’em over!”

Toby Sam dislodged a stone in his sinuous flight, and it went rolling down the hillside. Hearing it, Black John turned around with a jump of surprise, and stared in the direction of the sound.

Suddenly he felt that perhaps he had not been robbed by the girl, but that some one else was the thief.

With revolver in hand he began to move in the direction of that sound, peering on before him.

But Toby Sam was still as crafty as ever. He had wormed into a black hole, and there he lay, doubled up like an opossum shamming death, and with no more sound.

Black John came within a yard of him, and did not see him.

“I wonder what made that noise?” he muttered. “Somethin’ started a stone. Mebbe a cussed coyote.”

He peered long, on the slope of the hill, returning finally to the cave, when he could discover nothing.

The girl had tried to slip away during his absence, but had become bewildered, and found herself in a “pocket” of the rocky wall, with her way now barred by her captor.

“Come out o’ there!” he snarled. “What you doin’ there?”

She came out, trembling.

“Now I ask ye ag’in fer them emeralds!”

“And I tell you I haven’t them!” she screamed at him. “I haven’t them, do you hear, you hateful beast?”

CHAPTER XLVI. THE CAPTURE OF THE THIEF.

As Toby Sam stole on, congratulating himself on his clever theft, he tripped suddenly over what seemed to be a grapevine in the path.

The supposed grapevine was a lariat, as he knew when a man sprang on him, caught him by the throat, jammed his head back against the ground, and commanded him to keep silent on pain of having his throat cut. The fingers of the man were like iron in their hold, and the command was made in a hoarse whisper.

The place was a mile or less from the cave, and the capture was made at a time when Toby Sam felt absolutely sure of getting away with the emeralds.

The cowardly rascal coughed and gurgled, and then lay back, quiet, staring-eyed, and weak from fear. Then he saw that this man had comrades, two of them, at least, who came up one on each side, and they looked at the prisoner.

“Got him, eh?” There was a chuckle. “Waugh! He’s thet pesky sneak, Toby Sam!”

It was Nick Nomad who spoke. Toby Sam recognized that, and knew he had fallen into the hands of Buffalo Bill’s party, which was as bad as, or worse, than falling into the hands of Black John.

“Speak above a whisper, and you’re a dead man!”

The fingers relaxed as the threat was made; and Toby Sam, clutching his aching throat, stared again at the men who had captured him.

“Search him, Gordon!”

Pawnee Bill “went through” the pockets of Toby Sam. “Ah!” he said, in a tone of surprise. “What’s this?” He had found the bag of emeralds.

Buffalo Bill’s last remaining wax match illuminated the contents of the bag, showing the nature of the find.

Then they began to question Toby Sam.

He tried to lie, at first; but the cold muzzle of Buffalo Bill’s revolver, thrust into his face, convinced him of the wisdom of telling the truth. Then he admitted the theft of the emeralds from Black John, and told where Black John was hiding with his prisoner.

“Hear that, Bruce?” said Buffalo Bill.

Another man—a young man—had crept forward, and was listening. He was shaking with excitement.

“You must lead us to the place,” he said. “Is she well, and unharmed?”

“I—I think she is; she was in there, and he was talkin’ with her, and was cussin’ her, when I came away.”

“Tell us just where this little cave is,” Buffalo Bill commanded.

Toby Sam told as well as he could.

“You’ll show us the way now. Bruce, hand me those cords! We’ll tie his hands, and if he starts to run we’ll shoot him.”

“I—I won’t run!” Toby Sam promised, his teeth chattering.

His hands were tied by Buffalo Bill and Clayton.

“Now lead on,” said Buffalo Bill; “and, remember, if you make any noise, or try to warn Black John, we’ll shoot you.”

Notwithstanding that they had captured Toby Sam and had him for a guide, Buffalo Bill and his pards did not go far.

The way was stony and rough, and they feared they could not get near the cave without attracting Black John’s attention. Because of the darkness Black John’s chances of getting out of the cave and away were considerable, if he became alarmed and tried to escape. While, if he fancied himself undiscovered and still safe, he would remain in the cave, and could be captured in the morning.

They discussed this phase of the matter, and lay down with their prisoner on the slope of the hill, when still some distance from the cave.

Before that they had heard a scream from the girl, which had rendered Clayton so frantic that Buffalo Bill’s utmost persuasions were needed to keep him from making a blind rush through the darkness. Had he done so he would have been shot, of course, by Black John, and perhaps the efforts of his friends would have been balked.

The hours that followed held nothing but mental torture for him. Nor were the scouts and his pards much less concerned for the security of the girl. They divined the situation: that the loss of the emeralds had been discovered, and that Black John was, as a consequence, in an unamiable and dangerous mood.

Black John, supposed to be keeping watch by the cave, was as silent as the men lying farther down on the bowldered slope. If he moved, or spoke, they had no knowledge of it; and the girl made no sound, after that scream which had reached them.

Bruce Clayton tormented himself with fears that she was dead—had been killed by Black John; or that Black John was even then out of the cave, and far on his way to some other point, and that Cody and his companions were guarding what was no better than an empty bird’s nest.

The morning came, after what seemed an interminable night; but the faint light of the early morning did not reveal Black John; and Bruce’s feverish fears intensified. But Buffalo Bill was not ready yet to make a move.

Only by combined luck and good work had he and his pards been able to follow Black John’s trail to the point where they had captured Toby Sam; and, after all that work, the scout was not willing to jeopardize anything by a premature movement.

Then something was seen to move on the slope.

It was Black John, rising from another night of watching.

Still Buffalo Bill and his pards maintained silence, waiting for the light to get better.

It was seen that Black John contemplated flight. He brought the girl out of the cave, tottering as she was with weakness; and they heard his harsh words to her.

“Let me shoot him, the scoundrel!” begged Clayton. “I can’t stand it any longer.”

Instead, Buffalo Bill lifted his voice. “Hello, there!” he called.

Black John wheeled as if on a pivot. He looked about, and saw no one.

“We’ve got you covered with our revolvers,” were the next words he heard. “If you don’t throw up your hands and surrender, down you go.”

Black John did not surrender; he gave a jump for the cave, pulling the girl backward by the hair, so that she fell in the very entrance, and was pulled in by him, out of sight.

CHAPTER XLVII. AT BAY—AT PEACE.

Silence reigned after that until Buffalo Bill spoke again, announcing to Black John that he was cornered, and demanding his surrender.

“Come and git me!” yelled the desperate man. “But recklect when you do I’ll shoot the girl.”

“We want to have a talk with you,” said Buffalo Bill. “We’ve got a proposition to make to you. Surrender the girl unharmed, and we’ll spare your life.”

When there was no answer to this, they began to crawl up the slope, taking Toby Sam with them.

“We’ve got a friend of yours here,” called Buffalo Bill. “We’ll release him, and let him come in and tell you the conditions here, so that you’ll know how foolish it is for you to try to hold out against us.”

“No—no!” Toby Sam gurgled; “he’ll shoot me! He’ll think I’ve turned ag’inst him; he’ll think I took the emeralds; he’ll think——”

He twisted out of the way of Buffalo Bill, whose intention of sending him to the cave he feared, and leaping up, he tried to run.

It was a foolish and fatal movement.

Black John’s revolver cracked, and Toby Sam fell with its bullet in his head, being dead as he struck the ground.

Now at bay, Black John was desperate and murderous. He had thought the man he shot at was one of Buffalo Bill’s force.

Silence followed the fall of Toby Sam’s body, and it lay on the rocks, the face, ghastly in death, turned skyward.

There was a movement in the cave; the next moment Lena Forest appeared.

Her hands and feet were bound, but she stood erect, while behind her, using her as a shield, Black John crouched, like a desperate villain and craven.

“Remember that I’m keepin’ her in front of me here in the mouth of this cave,” he shouted, “and if you shoot at me the chances aire you’ll hit her. Recklect it!”

Buffalo Bill’s revolver was leveled, seemingly on the girl. The next moment its report rang out, and the body of the man behind the girl slipped downward, and then fell, sprawling out in the cavern entrance.

It was a shot such as only Buffalo Bill or Pawnee Bill could have made.

In shouting his words, Black John had peered, with one eye, over the shoulder of the girl, trying to see the men who were hemming him in. That eye and the forehead by it was a mark big enough for Buffalo Bill. He sent his revolver bullet into the head of Black John with as deadly an effect as Black John, but a minute or so before, had sent one into the head of Toby Sam.

Buffalo Bill and his friends remained there by the cave for almost a week, to give Lena Forest time to regain her strength, for her physical weakness was extreme. They shot game on the mountains and in the valleys, and lived well.

Black John and the coward, Toby Sam, were buried at the foot of the hill, in graves unmarked by a single stone. As for the other outlaws, who had scattered and fled, what became of them was not known, but the band of “mustangers,” who had made their headquarters recently in the valley of the Bitter Water, went suddenly out of business.

When Lena had fully recovered from her exhaustion they all returned to the fort. The day after their arrival there, Buffalo Bill resumed his scouting expedition in the Blackfoot country. Bruce enlisted in the regiment stationed at the fort. Later he and Lena journeyed to the East, taking the emeralds; and there they were married and made their home.

THE END.

BUFFALO BILL

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