THE MYSTERIOUS YOUNG WOMAN.
In spite of the lugubrious prediction of Pizen Kate, Buffalo Bill
retired to his own room in good season that night.
Latimer had met him, after that attack of the Mexican, and had shown
great indignation when the scout told him about it. As for the
Mexican, he did not return.
With no servant to wait on the table, or even to prepare the meals,
Latimer went himself into the kitchen, and prepared something for
supper. The scout insisted on helping him in this, urging his
experience in such matters.
“Cody, I’m experienced, too,” said Latimer. “I’ve told you how my
servants disappear. This isn’t the first time I’ve been left without
any help. And so I’ve been forced to do for myself, not only cooking,
but other things.”
“Why do you stay in such a place?” the scout could not help asking.
“I’ll tell you!” Latimer stood off, looking at him, and making a
striking picture as the light of the stove fire flamed into his face.
“If I should leave here, it would be because I had been driven away
by superstitious fears. I refuse to become superstitious. I am not a
believer in ghosts.”
“Nor I.”
“I am sure that all the things that have happened have some easy
solution. Some time ago I resolved to penetrate to the bottom of the
mystery. Should I leave without doing that, or not be able to do
that, I should always feel that perhaps there are ghosts, and such
things. So, Cody, you see I can’t afford, for myself, to go away.
Besides,” he added, “I came out here for my health.” He held up his
arm. “Observe that arm, firm and strong. When I came here I was a
shadow, without muscle or sound nerves. To-day I am a well man. I
regained my health here; and I do not propose to be driven away.”
“As we both refuse to believe in ghosts, what is your belief
concerning these strange things?” the scout asked. “I can’t tell you
how anxious I am about Nomad.”
“That’s where you have me,” Latimer admitted. “I can’t explain
it--can’t explain anything; and when I have tried to follow out
theories they were always disproved. I am just waiting to see what
will come of it.”
After retiring, Buffalo Bill lay awake a long time, thinking over the
singular occurrences of the day. His anxiety concerning the fate of
Nick Nomad was intense. Nomad had not been out of his thoughts. It
had been strange enough to discover Nomad in this place, doing the
work of a menial; still stranger to hear that he had married, and
married such a woman as Pizen Kate; but even these things became as
nothing compared with the strangeness of Nomad’s disappearance. More
and more Buffalo Bill began to suspect that John Latimer was not
just what he seemed; and the thought that perhaps Latimer had lured
him to this place, with evil designs against him, had strong support
in the dastardly attack made by the Mexican, and the other attack
made by the Indian.
The scout had been here but a few hours, yet twice in that time had
his life been attempted, he was sure. This made him feel that a
similar attempt might be again made.
Thus reflecting, he placed his revolver ready to his hand, and lay
listening.
The time was well on toward midnight, and he had grown sleepy, when
he heard a sound at the door of his room. The door opened, and in the
bright moonlight which flooded the room a young woman stood revealed.
The scout’s start of surprise caused her to stop on the threshold.
She seemed to listen a moment; then, as he lifted his head to get a
better look, she turned and fled. Instantly he leaped from the bed
and ran to the door; but she had vanished, and with step so light
that he could not hear her going.
Leaving the door open, the scout hurried into his clothing, and then
went hastily to Latimer’s room.
“Latimer!” he called, tapping softly.
“Yes!” came the answer. Latimer’s feet were heard as they struck
the floor. A moment later the door opened cautiously, and in the
moonlight Latimer’s gray beard appeared.
“Ah, Cody, you startled me! Is there anything wrong?”
“Tell me, Latimer, is there a young lady in this house?”
“A young lady?” Latimer gasped.
“Yes.”
“Why, certainly not, Cody.”
“There is no woman in this house?”
“None.”
“I saw one but a minute ago. She opened the door of my room quite as
though she had made a mistake in the room. The door was unlocked. She
stopped, when she heard me stir, and when I half rose in the bed she
fled.”
“Cody, you dreamed it!” Latimer insisted. “It couldn’t have been
true.”
“I was not dreaming. I was sleepy, I’ll admit, but I was not asleep.”
“Cody, you certainly were dreaming.”
Buffalo Bill could not be convinced of this; and he made a search
through the halls, and looked into some of the rooms. He confessed to
a very queer feeling when he returned to his room.
“It’s almost enough to make any one believe in ghosts,” he commented
to himself. “But that was not a ghost, and I was not dreaming. A
young woman stood right there! She apparently came into the room by
mistake; may have tried to enter for the purpose of assassinating me!
Which was it? And wasn’t John Latimer lying again when he said what
he did about it?”
Lying down fully dressed, the scout awaited something--he did not
know what. He began to feel that his nerves were badly upset.
Presently, thinking he heard soft footsteps somewhere, he again left
the room quietly and went in search of them.
He even went out of the house, and looked round outside, carrying his
revolver ready for use, for the mystery of all these things filled
him with something as near to fear as he had ever known.
As he returned to the door by which he had left the house he was
startled by hearing voices; then, in the half darkness of the shaded
piazza, he saw again the girl.
Here was confirmation of the fact that he had not been asleep and
dreamed that he saw this woman. She was talking with some one; and
the scout saw at her side a young man.
He was about to advance and demand an explanation, when the girl
opened the door behind her, and she and the young man vanished into
the house.
Buffalo Bill, having come out by that door, had left it unlocked.
Now, when he ran up to it, he found that it was locked from the
inside. He was left out of the house; and to get in he was compelled
to call up John Latimer once more, doing it this time by shouting to
him below his window.
Latimer appeared, coming down into the lower hall in a red dressing
gown and slippers.
“What is it, Cody?”
Buffalo Bill told him.
“Come here, Cody!” He lighted a candle and led the way into a small
side room, where, instead of answering Buffalo Bill’s questions, he
looked at him strangely, and then took down some small bottles from
a shelf. “I studied medicine once, Cody, and keep medicines here for
my own use. You must let me prescribe for you.”
“You mean to say I did not see and hear that young woman and young
man?”
“I think you are not well, Cody,” was the evasive reply. “Permit me
to prescribe for you.”
He poured some of the contents of one of the bottles into a glass.
“No!” said the scout. “I am not ill; there’s nothing the matter with
me. I need no medicine.”
Latimer came and looked him closely in the face, holding up the
candle.
“Cody, I insist that no young man or young woman is on this place, so
far as I know. But----” He hesitated.
“Finish the sentence,” the scout urged.
“Well, what I mean to remind you of is that there have been strange
happenings in this house. I’ve mentioned them. These are some of the
mysterious things which I told you would make me superstitious, if
there were any superstition in my nature.”
“You have seen this young man and woman?”
“Yes, I have seen them. And then I promptly dosed myself for the
benefit of my nerves; not being sure then, or now, that I had seen
anything at all. But if there are ghosts in this house----”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the scout. “I saw a young man and young
woman standing together on the piazza, and heard them talking. They
came into the house; and they locked from the inside the door I had
unlocked, so that I had to call to you to get in. That wasn’t the
work of ghosts. What became of them?”
“Cody,” said Latimer impressively, “what became of Nomad?” He looked
at Buffalo Bill again in that peculiar manner. “Cody,” he said
impressively, “I’ll tell you now something I have not hinted at. A
young woman and her lover, who at the time were occupying the house
here in my absence, were killed here. Who committed the murder, or
why, was never shown; but I suspected the Redskin Rovers. On two
occasions since then I myself have fancied that I saw a young man
and a young woman here; but I knew then, and know now, that it was
only fancy, a result of a heated imagination. A good many things have
happened to-day to upset you, and they have excited your mind and
made it morbid. So you fancied you saw the young man and the young
woman.”
To Buffalo Bill it seemed that Latimer was trying to throw him off
the scent. Yet he could hardly see how Latimer would expect him to
believe this unlikely statement.
“No matter how excited I might be, is it probable,” he asked, “that
I would chance to see the young man and the young woman that you
did, when I had never so much as heard of them or their murder, and
therefore they could not have been in my mind?”
“There are strange things in this world, Cody.”
“I agree with you.”
It was not the least strange to him that Latimer should seek to make
him believe in this ghost yarn. Again the impression was driven in on
him that Latimer was concealing a great deal and was not acting in
a manner that could be considered straightforward. This caused the
scout to feel more strongly that great danger surrounded him, and
that he must guard against it, even though he could not foresee the
direction from which it would come.