INDIAN TREACHERY.
When Buffalo Bill gave up his profitless search and came out of the
house he saw a mounted Indian ride up to the gate, some distance
off, where he met John Latimer. The Indian was a painted and plumed
specimen of his race, and, altogether, a glittering and jaunty
figure, as he sat on his mustang, talking with Latimer.
Only a few words were said by the two men, and then the Indian
wheeled his mustang and galloped away, his feathers flying, and the
sun shining with brilliant effect on his beaded garments and on the
painted spots on his horse.
Buffalo Bill had emerged from the big house by a side entrance. He
hurried now round to the front, where he expected to meet Latimer
returning from this talk with the redskin. Latimer had gone from
the gate in another way, however; and the scout did not see him for
several minutes, and then it was in the house itself.
“What about that Indian, Latimer?” was his question.
Latimer stared blankly. “What Indian?” he said.
“Why, the one you met out there by the gate a while ago.”
“I have seen no Indian!” said Latimer.
The answer so took the scout aback that for a moment he was at a loss
what to say.
“I am sure, Latimer, I saw you out by the gate talking with a mounted
Indian, not more than five minutes ago. I had just got to the steps,
on the east side there, and saw the Indian ride up to the gate. You
were there, and you spoke with him, and then he rode away.”
An angry look flashed over Latimer’s face.
“Cody,” he said quietly, “you are my guest here; and, therefore, I
shall not try to call you to account for giving me the lie!”
“You mean that I did not see you out there talking with an Indian?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then, Latimer, I saw your very image and counterpart!”
“That may be, Cody. I can’t say as to that. You did not see me.”
Latimer’s manner was strangely cold.
“You did not even know there was an Indian out there?”
“No.”
“This is as strange as the singular disappearance of my friend Nomad.”
“Don’t you think you are just a little given to imaginings, Cody?
Pardon the suggestion. You saw your friend go into a room, which,
according to your own story, he could not have gone into and got out
of without your knowing it. And now you have seen me talking with an
Indian by the front gate, when all the while I have been here in the
house.”
A certain sense of giddy bewilderment attacked the level-headed
scout. Could he have been subject to hallucinations? The very
suggestion was enough to give him a severe mental start.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I was sure of those two things. But if you say
you were not out there, of course I accept your statement. But I saw
some one there that I took to be you.”
Latimer laughed, and the frown vanished from his face.
“That’s more like you, Cody! I have given you no occasion to think I
would lie about a matter of that kind, or would have any occasion to
deceive you.”
“That is true,” the scout admitted.
“There may have been no one out at the gate,” Latimer urged.
Buffalo Bill could not admit that, puzzled as he was.
To make sure that he had not been wholly the victim of some optical
delusion, as soon as he ceased talking with Latimer he walked out to
the gate, and there scanned the ground, looking for tracks of the
mustang. While thus looking he heard his name called by Pizen Kate.
A suggestion came to him.
“You didn’t see an Indian out here a while ago talking with Latimer?”
he asked her.
“I wasn’t lookin’,” she said noncommittally. “The only thing I was
lookin’ for was that no-’count husband o’ mine, that’s run away from
me ag’in. I can’t find hide ner hair of him.”
“I wish you could,” said the scout, with much earnestness.
“Then you really don’t know what’s become of him?” she queried.
“Not in the least.”
“You didn’t help him to git away?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, I thought ye did, and I was good an’ mad!”
“You didn’t see an Indian here?”
“I didn’t, for I wasn’t lookin’.”
“Nor you didn’t see Latimer come from this gate five minutes or more
ago?”
“I tell ye, I _wasn’t lookin’_. Somethin’ queer about this place,”
she added suspiciously.
“I’m beginning to think so, too.”
“Well,” she declared, “they can’t fool with me! Aire you goin’ to
stay here long?”
“Until I discover what has become of Nomad.”
“Then I’m with ye! We’ll find him, if we have to tar and feather that
Latimer to make him tell what he knows. I reckon I’ll go up to the
house and give him a few jabs in the ribs with this old umbreller, to
make him talk a bit.”
She marched angrily toward the house.
The scout began to look for the tracks of the mustang. He found them
in the dust close by the gate; and on the other side of the gate he
saw the imprint of shoes, which he was sure had been made by John
Latimer.
“As Kate says, there is something mysterious here,” was his thought,
“and it begins to look as if John Latimer were crooked. He lied to me
when he said he had not been down here by this gate, and he lied in
saying he had not here met an Indian. I think I’ll follow this trail.
It may reveal something.”
The scout started off on the trail of the mustang; and though, when
he got away from the gate, other horse trails interfered, he was yet
so skillful that he picked out that of the mustang from among them
and continued on, finding that it led toward the hills.
The house was out of sight, and he was on a long, grassy level, when,
looking up, he saw the Indian riding slowly toward him. Only one look
was needed to show that this was the identical Indian who had been
at the gate. He seemed to be either returning toward the house, or
else, having seen that he was being followed, he had ridden back to
ascertain the meaning of it.
“A word with you,” shouted Buffalo Bill.
The Indian drew rein at a little distance, and sat in silence,
regarding the scout with distrust.
“You were up there at the gate a little while ago?”
The redskin did not answer.
“Tell me if that isn’t so, and if you didn’t talk there at the gate
with the man who lives in that house?”
The question seemed to throw the redskin into an unaccountable rage.
He drove his mustang forward without an instant’s warning, and,
drawing a short rawhide whip, he aimed a blow at the scout’s face.
Though the movement was so unexpected, the scout was not caught
napping. For as the enraged redskin tried to ride Buffalo Bill
down and strike him in the eyes with the whip, the scout caught
the mustang by the head and nose, jerking its head round, and it
went over in a heap, as if shot. The thing was done so quickly and
cleverly that the Indian was thrown from the mustang’s back; and his
right foot got caught under the falling horse.
The fall jarred a grunt from him; and then he tried to pull his foot
out, but the scout leaped toward him now, drawing his revolver.
The horse had quivered as it fell, but now it lay stretched out. It
had struck on its head and neck in its fall, and the weight of its
body thus crushing against it had broken its neck, killing it.
The Indian stared stupidly when he saw that revolver.
“White man no shoot!” he begged.
“I don’t intend to, unless you try treachery and force me to,” was
the answer, as Cody pointed the pistol at the Indian’s feathered
head. “Tell me why you rode to the gate over there a while ago!” he
sternly commanded.
The redskin stared stolidly, evidently inventing some answer.
“Me no go.”
“You talked there with the white man who lives in that house?”
The Indian shook his head.
“Why did you get mad and try to strike me with your whip when I asked
you about it?”
“Let pore Injun go!” whined the redskin.
The scout repeated his question.
“Let pore Injun go!” was the only answer. The redskin pretended he
did not understand what Buffalo Bill meant.
“You may go,” said the latter, who had no desire to hold him.
The black eyes glittered. Accustomed to treachery, the Indian could
not understand this, unless it spelled trickery of some kind.
Buffalo Bill seized the head of the horse and drew the body round a
little, and the Indian extricated his foot, which had not been much
hurt. He limped, however, when he rose to his feet.
“I’m sorry about the mustang,” said the scout, “but it was your own
fault. You provoked it, when you tried to ride me down and strike me
with that whip. But you may go.”
The redskin hesitated, looking at the pistol held by the scout; but
when Buffalo Bill repeated his permission to go, he started off
slowly, glancing back as if he feared this were but a trick to give
the scout a chance to shoot him in the back.
“Here,” said the scout, “don’t you want these things?”
He pointed to the rawhide accouterments on the dead horse. The Indian
looked at them doubtfully.
“White man no shoot?”
“No; come and get them.”
Buffalo Bill turned and walked away, watching the Indian, whom he
could not trust. When he had gone some distance he saw that the
redskin was stripping the trappings from the dead mustang.
Having secured them, the Indian slung them across his shoulders and
hurried away, and soon was running for the shelter of the nearest
hills. He had been badly worsted, and he knew it; yet he could not
understand one thing--why Cody had not killed him when he had so good
a chance. Had the case been reversed, he would have killed the scout.
“Now, what does this mean?” Buffalo Bill was asking himself, as he
returned to the house. “John Latimer talked with that Indian by the
gate; yet he denies it. And when I suggested to the Indian that he
had talked with Latimer, the fact that my question showed I had
witnessed the meeting threw the redskin into a rage and he attacked
me. What is the meaning of it?”