CHAPTER XVII.

THE STORY OF QUICKSILVER JOHN.

Ben Woods, the marshal of the town of Skyline, met Buffalo Bill and his pards and followers in front of the principal hotel of the town.

The hotel piazza was filled with “prominent citizens,” as a sort of welcoming committee backing the efforts of the marshal, while people of lesser importance filled the street on each side of the hotel and backed against the opposite buildings in a curious wave.

Buffalo Bill’s arrival in the town had been hourly expected, and had been watched for from the “lookout” station on the hotel roof.

As soon as his coming was announced the news was sent flying throughout the community.

Woods stepped down from the piazza, extending to Buffalo Bill his thin, wiry hand.

“It seems like you’ve been a long time coming, Cody,” he said, “but we’re glad to see you.”

He flung commands at some Mexicans grouped near.

“Pedro, Sebastian—you fellers git a move on, and take the hosses—what ye staring at? Yes, them’s Injuns with the gentlemen! Didn’t ye never see any before? Well, you’ll have time to git acquainted later. Take the hosses and hustle ’em to the stables.”

The Mexicans flew to obey.

The citizens on the piazza swarmed down behind the marshal, and the next moment Buffalo Bill and his pards were being given a characteristic greeting of the border.

“Any word about the child?” the great scout asked of Woods, almost before the greetings were finished.

“Not a thing,” said Woods. “We’re reckoning that Injuns took him; that’s what we got, from the little of the trail we could follow; though why they would do it, or what they would want with the boy, puzzled us, until——”

He stopped to present another “prominent citizen,” who had just arrived in breathless haste and desired an introduction.

Leaving Wild Bill and old Nomad to converse with the group on and about the piazza, Buffalo Bill accompanied Woods into the hotel, as soon as he could do it without offense to the assembled people.

“I’ve sent for the kid’s father and mother,” said Woods, “and they’ll be here in a little while, I reckon. It’s a curious case.”

“From the report I received, it is. You were about to say something a while ago, but stopped to introduce that gentleman?”

“Oh, yes; I was sayin’, I believe, that the whole thing tangled us all up. But I heard somethin’ this mornin’ which, maybe, is a clew. And, by the way, I just now arrested and jailed the feller that give it to me. Mebbe you know him? It’s Tom Conover, old Toltec Tom, some call him, and——”

“Shot a woman?”

“Well, it was by clear accident, so he says.”

“Is she much hurt?” was the scout’s interested query.

“I’m hopin’ not, but we ain’t goin’ to be too rough on any white man for a thing like that, especially if ’twas an accident.”

Buffalo Bill settled back in the chair he had taken. He and Woods were in the hotel office; but the clerk had gone out on the piazza, and was listening there to the talk of old Nick Nomad and Wild Bill. The trapper’s heavy voice, uttering characteristic exclamations, floated in at the window, accompanied by the comments of some of the citizens.

“Go on,” said Buffalo Bill to the marshal. “Tell me about the child.”

“Well, you know the story?”

“Not clearly. I was not at Fort Grant when your messenger arrived; so what I know I received at third hand, from the commander there, on my return. But he said that word had come from here of the kidnaping of a child by Indians, and he ordered me to report here and see what I could do.”

“Well, that’s straight, and nearly the whole of it. It’s Bill Morgan’s boy, down at the foot of the hill over there. They live beyond the town, ye see, and so it was an easy job for the reds to sneak in and do their work, particularly as no one was thinkin’ of such a thing, and the kid was allowed to play round outdoors all he wanted. I’ve sent for Morgan and his wife, so’s they can tell you all about it, and jest how it happened; but that’s all they know, or any one does, unless it’s Tom Conover.”

He produced some cigars and passed them to the scout, as if the matter under consideration called for such care that haste would be its ruin.

“Thanks!” said Buffalo Bill, accepting a cigar in the spirit in which it was offered.

Woods struck a match, which he held out for the scout’s use, lighting his own cigar from it after the scout’s was going. Then he settled back in his chair with quite as much deliberation.

Before he went on with his story the clerk of the hotel returned to the office, and some other men came in at the clerk’s heels. They ranged themselves by the bar, where one or two of them called for liquor, which the clerk dispensed from a long-necked, black bottle.

“What Tom Conover told me maybe amounts to something,” said the marshal, “and maybe it don’t; but you’re entitled to know it, and it may help. It’s this: About twenty or thirty years ago, he said, a child was missin’ in jest about this same way. Skyline wasn’t standin’ here at that time. The kidnapin’ was done south o’ here, at the old ’Doby Wells, where a settler had pitched his shack and was trying to live. Injuns swung down from the mountains and run off with the kid; they didn’t massacree, nor burn the house, nor they didn’t make any ginral raid; they jest snatched up the kid and hit the trail for the mountains.”

“And what became of the child?”

“Well, if anybody knows, I don’t; Conover didn’t seem to. He jest remembered that. But he said he recalled that when it was done there was talk around to the effect that every twenty or thirty years them hill Injuns did a trick like that; what for I don’t know, and I reckon nobody don’t. My idea, though, if I was put to it, is that if the thing ever really happened, it was for a sacrifice of some kind.”

The scout smoked in silence as Woods talked.

“Anything else?” he said, when Woods stopped.

“That’s about all; only Conover was inclined to the theory that it was the work of old Fire Top, and so was we; I mean this present case was the work of that old heathen, we thought. Why he thought it I don’t know, and he never said. He’d been boozing, as I’ve told you, and whether he really knowed what he was talkin’ about or not I can’t say. But there you have it.”

“What else?” the scout asked again, when the marshal once more subsided behind his cloud of smoke.

“I reckon there ain’t anything else, that I know of.”

“Why did you think it was the work of old Fire Top?”

“Well, from the fact that a red who was supposed to be one of Fire Top’s bucks was seen sashayin’ round Morgan’s place the day before, and from what Conover told me this morning?”

“You found a trail?”

“Not a very plain one; but there was pony tracks behind the knoll below the house—tracks of an unshod Injun cayuse—which must have been made about the time the kid disappeared.”

“You followed them?”

“To the point where they entered the main trail leadin’ toward the Cumbres. We couldn’t do nothin’ after that, for the main trail is hard as flint, with a thousand tracks, if there’s one.”

“You might have made sure that the cayuse tracks didn’t leave the Cumbres trail.”

“We tried to, but we didn’t find nothing—except this.” The marshal put his hand in his pocket and drew out a battered piece of silver that had been rudely fashioned into an Indian earring.

“Whoever wore that was most likely an Indian,” he said, “though it might ’a’ been a Mexican; they’re all alike in wantin’ to wear shiny things in their ears and in their hair—Mexicans aire half Injun, anyhow, ye know. One of my men picked that up below the knoll, as we was follerin’ that cayuse trail; and I put it in my pocket.”

“Did you send a force toward the Cumbres Mountains?” queried the scout.

“Well, not all the way,” said the marshal, twisting uneasily in his chair, for he knew that was a thing he should have insisted on. “I couldn’t git any men that wanted to go farther than the Cross Timbers. Fire Top’s Toltecs ain’t men that aire to be fooled with, and so I didn’t go beyond that point. But I didn’t see any need, as we’d struck no trail. And if it was Fire Top, and he got into the Cumbres, where he holes up, then it wouldn’t do no good, anyhow.”

“Why?” said the scout quietly.

The marshal tried to laugh, but failed.

“Well, Cody,” he answered, “if you want to go into the Cumbres, and up to Fire Top’s headquarters there, you’re welcome to; but not for me, or any one I could git here to trail after me. It never was done but once—by any one that came back alive; and that was when Quicksilver John blundered down there by mistake, and got out again by mistake. It wasn’t courage, but luck, that brought Quicksilver John out of there that time, I’m telling you.”

He settled back again, and tried to hide his confusion by “smoking up.”

“Maybe you don’t know about Quicksilver John and that little adventurer, Cody? You wasn’t in this section at the time, and I don’t think it has ever got into print, so you’re pardoned for not knowin’ anything about it.

“Quicksilver John was huntin’ for a cinnabar lode, as usual, and he hit into the Cumbres, takin’ nothin’ but a burro and his tools and his water bottle and grub. It’s a desert country, and he had a hard time straight from the start.

“He didn’t know anything about Fire Top nor them wicked Toltecs of his, and so wasn’t figurin’ on trouble from that quarter. He didn’t find any cinnabar, but he struck the queerest Injun town that any one ever heard of, or dreamed of; it had reg’lar houses, somewhat like them cliff dwellers’ houses you’ve seen, or maybe read about. But some was better—some was of stone. It was a bang-up place, for an Injun city, he said; and he was wonderin’ whether it could really be Injuns livin’ there, or some settlement of whites he had never heard of, when the queerest thing happened you could ever imagine. I dunno whether to believe it or not! But Quicksilver John said that while he was studyin’ them houses, a big eagle, that he hadn’t even see, flapped down out of a tree behind him and struck him between the shoulders.

“He was layin’ at the time on the edge of a precipice, lookin’ down; and the blow of the eagle knocked him over the edge, so that he began to fall. But, so he reported, the claws of the eagle had got fast in his clothes, and that kept him from dropping down like a shot; the eagle tried to fly with him, and that held him up a bit, though his weight kept pullin’ the eagle down and down. He was too heavy for the eagle to carry; but at the same time the efforts of the eagle to lift him up kept him from droppin’ swift. So together they came right down into that queer town, nighabout in the middle of it, the eagle flappin’ his wings and screechin’, and him swinging his arms and legs and yellin’. It must have been a queer sight.

“And it was that way they landed, clost by some Injuns, that wore red feathers in their hair, and was otherwise ’most naked, except for a lot of gold bracelets. When the ground was struck the eagle managed to pull its hooks out of the clothes of Quicksilver John, and to fly off; and there he was left, sprawlin’.

“Well, them red-feathered Injuns swarmed round him prompt, and whooped and hollered; and they picked him up and carried him off to some kind of a temple, where there was a great howdy-do about it. And then a priest, or a king, or somethin’, come; Quicksilver John didn’t know who, or what, for this priest, or king, or whatever, was all veiled, and wore a robe of some kind.

“But, anyway, after Quicksilver John had been held some days, and expected to be killed every minute, he was carried up to the top of the cliff from which the eagle had knocked him, and told to git.”

The marshal stopped and puffed at his cigar, which had nearly gone out.

“And then,” he said, breathing deeply and blowing out the smoke, “you can bet he got—he skedaddled.”

Some of the men who had come in and heard the story, laughed; they had heard it before, and saw only its comedy elements.

“I reckon you don’t believe that story, Cody,” remarked Woods, glancing at the scout. “It’s a purty stiff yarn, and I dunno as I believe it myself. But what Quicksilver John wanted to tell it for, if it was a lie, gits me; he didn’t gain anything by it.”

“He told it for the same reason that makes a man like to tell the biggest fish story,” said some one in the crowd.

“He said,” went on the marshal, “that the Injuns was Toltecs, and was under that old coyote called Red Feather, though whether Red Feather is livin’ or dead, or anything much about him, nobody knows. Maybe there ain’t any old Fire Top, and no such queer Toltecs in them hills; but there aire Apaches there, and that’s enough for me. Wherever there aire Apaches I keep out. Sabe?”

He hesitated, and went on:

“But Toltec Tom says there is, or was, a chief called Fire Top; and Injuns wearin’ red feathers have been seen round here, and they’re said to be Toltecs, and live in them Cumbres Hills. But that’s all we know, Cody; maybe all that anybody knows. Except that this kid is gone—seems to ’a’ been stolen—and we found Injun pony tracks, and this Injun earring, or nose ring, or whatever it is.

“And so, after talkin’ the thing over, when we couldn’t do anything, or very much, ourselves, we sent that messenger to Fort Grant, askin’ for your help; and here you aire.”

He seemed mightily relieved that this was so.