CHAPTER XXI.

GIANT FOOTSTEPS AND DEVIL BIRDS.

Seeing that his Indians were for a time useless, Buffalo Bill took up the work of searching for the lost trail, calling Wild Bill to his aid.

“Probably you can’t blame Indians,” said the man from Laramie, “but it’s enough to make a sensible man sick, the way Nomad acts. I hope he’ll see a whiskizoos some day, and that it scares him to death.”

Wild Bill’s disgust over the superstitious behavior of old Nomad amused Buffalo Bill mightily.

“It’s as useless to blame Nomad as to blame the reds,” he said; “he lived with Indians the better part of his life, so that naturally his mental machinery works somewhat like that of an Indian.”

The keen-eyed scout had not searched far, out on the edge of the hills away from the lost trail, before he made a discovery; though just what it meant he was at first at a loss to know.

“See here,” he said to his pard, and pointed to a depression in a little hollow of loose sand that lay between some rocks. “What do you say that is—what made it?”

Wild Bill took in at a glance the shape and dimensions of the depression.

“Ask me something easy,” he said; “it looks as if a round stone, or, rather, an egg-shaped one, had fallen and made that; but, if so, where is the stone?”

“It’s a footprint,” Buffalo Bill declared, when he had looked farther.

“An animal’s, then; no man ever had a foot as big as that.”

“Whatever made it,” the scout asserted, “went on across these rocks; for you can see here where pebbles were dislodged. This little stone was turned, too; the thing, man or animal, stepped on the end of it, and it flipped over as he lifted his foot and went on. That’s clear enough.”

It was, to men trained to close observation, as they were. The side of the small, flat, sharp-pointed stone which was now uppermost was of a different hue from the side that had weathered, and was now turned underneath, and of a different hue from the other stones about it.

Accompanied by Hickok, Buffalo Bill went on across the rocks, looking carefully ahead of him; for there was always the danger of ambush, as they were now in unknown and hostile Indian territory.

The trail of turned pebbles, with here and there an overturned stone, guided them, until they came again to a sandy depression between rocks, where once more they discovered an oblong hole suggesting the footprint of some large and unknown animal.

But at the side of this footprint was a bright, new rifle cartridge, and finger marks that were surely made by a human hand, where fingers had obviously reached down to pick up the dropped cartridge, but had failed.

Buffalo Bill looked at this intently.

“That’s plain enough,” he said; “this is the trail of a man, who passed along here in the darkness, or, perhaps, in the moonlight, for there was a bright moon along toward morning. Being in a hurry, or not able to see well, he now and then stepped into one of these sandy hollows, and here he dropped a cartridge from his belt, or out of his pocket, and tried to find it, but failed, probably because in the bad light he couldn’t see it.”

“Thunder, and carry one!” was Wild Bill’s exclamation. “I reckon, Cody, if you’re right—and it looks it—the fellow is a giant. That print is as big as the spoor of an elephant.”

Looking back, Buffalo Bill saw the three Apaches still prostrating themselves. But Little Cayuse, remembering doubtless that he was a chief, and possibly ashamed of his show of fear, had withdrawn from them. Yet he was still staring at the mountain, as if wondering what had become of the black head.

Observing Little Cayuse’s attitude, Wild Bill laughed.

“You see what it will mean, pard, when they discover these big tracks. They’ll be sure they’re the tracks of the giant whose head they saw over there.”

Buffalo Bill had already thought of that.

“And Nomad will be as bad,” Wild Bill added. “Here’s a whiskizoos for him that’s worth thinking about. What do you make out of it, Cody, anyhow? Was the fellow who went along here a giant, or did he have a case of deformed feet?”

As it was a question that could not be answered, the scout did not try to reply, but, standing on the rock by the sandy depression, he signaled to Nick Nomad to bring down the horses.

Nomad was seen to shake his head lugubriously; but he got up the horses, and began to pack the camp kit and other belongings, after having saddled and bridled the animals.

Having seen the old trapper begin this, Buffalo Bill went on with the work in hand, accompanied by Wild Bill, who made a running fire of comment in low tones, with now and then a characteristic humorous expression.

“What about Little Cayuse and the ’Paches?” Hickok asked after a while.

“It’s no use to argue with them now. When he sees the horses packed and the camp abandoned, Little Cayuse will come on; and you may be sure the ’Paches will trail along not far behind him, in spite of their fears. You see, Hickok, they’ll be more afraid to stay behind than to go ahead; to be with us gives them a sense of protection they can’t have when by themselves. Yet they’re not cowards; they’re simply superstitious, and scared by their superstition.”

“The same as Nomad?”

“Yes; only Nomad will listen to reason sooner than the reds. You can see that he’s bringing the horses down now.”

When they had followed the strange trail over the rocks for some distance, finding it anything but easy work, as at times there was not a thing to be seen and even the direction had to be reasoned out, they came down from the rocky hill to a stretch of sand, which reached on in a narrow valley toward the mountain which had shown the black head.

The big tracks, seen only twice before, were here plainer than print, where they entered and continued on the sandy area.

“The fellow was no giant, anyway,” said Buffalo Bill, looking at the big footprints.

“No? How do you make that out?”

“The tracks are too close together, you will observe. We may rightly suppose that a giant with feet as big as those tracks indicate would have long legs, in proportion, and would take long steps; but you can see that the steps are only about as far apart as they would be if made by an ordinary man; in fact, either you or I would step farther. The fellow had big, heavy feet, or wore large and heavy shoes, that is shown by the way he scraped his feet along, as if they were too heavy to lift out of the sand. Right out there, I judge, he broke into a run, from the way the tracks look.”

“Right, Cody!” assented Wild Bill. “You don’t need any Apaches to trail round and play Eliza’s bloodhounds for you; you’re fully equal to that trick yourself.”

Without waiting at the edge of the sandy plain for the arrival of Nomad and the horses, they continued to follow the big tracks, and as a result soon made another discovery.

A horse had come down out of the edge of the hills and crossed the narrow plain here, going in the direction of the mountain; and the man with the big feet had apparently followed it.

The small hoofs of the horse, and the fact that it was unshod, told that it was an Indian pony; while the depth to which its hoofs had sunk in the sand indicated that it carried a heavy burden.

While the two scouts were making these discoveries and discussing them they came upon a shining bit of metal lying in the sand. Of the shape and size of a twenty-dollar gold piece, it was not so round. One side, perfectly flat, showed hammer marks, while on the other side was the rayed image of the sun. The workmanship was Indian, without a doubt.

“Indian money?” said Wild Bill, as they looked at it.

“More likely an Indian ornament. Or it may be some sacred emblem. There are sun-worshiping tribes down here in the Southwest, you know; and I don’t doubt these mysterious Toltecs we’re trying so hard to visit have got a lot of sun-worship practices and traditions. So, this has a meaning for us.”

“Yes?”

“This pony was ridden by an Indian, and the rider dropped this bit of metal.”

“It’s pure gold, I think.”

He bit it, and tested it by ringing it against the barrel of his rifle.

“It’s gold, all right, Cody. Maybe the pony was loaded up with gold like it, judging by the way he sank into the sand here. And perhaps old Giant Foot was chasing after the Indian, to get some of the gold.”

Buffalo Bill understood that his pard was making wild and half-humorous guesses, in lieu of something tangible to hit upon.

“Well, Hickok, we’ve made a beginning,” he said, with immense satisfaction; “and now we’ll turn back and get something to eat, and talk the thing over while getting ready for another start. These trails go straight toward the notch in the mountain there; we can see that from here.”

“And they were made last night.”

“Or early this morning.”

“But this doesn’t tell us anything about Conover, Pard Cody; what of him? Why did he make a sneak like that out of our camp?”

That was not easily answered.

The two pards met Nick Nomad at the edge of the sand, where the old trapper had halted and dismounted.

“What yer goin’ ter do now?” was his querulous inquiry.

“We’ve found some trails that we’re going to follow, Nomad, as soon as we’ve had some breakfast,” Buffalo Bill informed him. “It isn’t healthy to begin a hard day’s work on an empty stomach, so you may open that war bag, while I start a fire here, and we’ll boil some coffee and have something to eat.”

Wild Bill, looking across the slope of the hills, saw the four Indians bunched together and staring down at the party of whites. He waved to them, and Little Cayuse started down the slope reluctantly.

When Little Cayuse was halfway down, the three Apaches began to follow him, coming along in single file.

“Just let them alone—pay no attention to them,” Buffalo Bill advised Hickok. “They’re no good right now, but we can work this thing out without them, and they’ll trail along behind us rather than be left.”

Nomad was silent, getting out the food and the cooking vessels; but what the scout stated was not lost on him.

“You’re goin’ ter try to foller thet ole Scar Head, Buffler?” he asked at length.

“We don’t intend to trouble ourselves in the least about him, Nomad,” was the reply. “We brought him along for a guide, as he knows more about this section than any of us; but as he seems to have deserted us, we’ll just go on without him, and let him work out his own salvation. We’re no worse off than if we hadn’t started with him.”

Nomad shook his head in vigorous dissent.

“A heap wuss off!” he asserted.

“That’s as one looks at it, perhaps,” said the scout. He would not argue the matter with his trapper pard.

“Yer ain’t any idee why he done it?”

“No.”

“What has yer found out thar in ther sand?”

Buffalo Bill explained the nature of the discoveries made.

“These hyar reds seem ter be havin’ more gold and silver than they kin well kerry, jedgin’ by ther way they drap it,” commented Nomad, as he inspected the gold piece which the scout showed him. “Recklect thet silver yearring, we thought it war, which war let fall thar by Morgan’s, whar ther kid was took, an’ now this hyar gold ornyment!”

“Perhaps we’ll pick up enough gold and silver along this trail to pay us for our time and trouble,” remarked the scout, laughing, as he put the gold piece away in his pocket.

By this time Little Cayuse had reached the edge of the small sand plain; and the Apaches, who had hurried their steps, were right behind him. Little Cayuse halted and looked at Buffalo Bill; apparently he expected a rebuke of some kind.

But Buffalo Bill chose rather to ignore what had happened.

“Have the Apaches come in, and we’ll get something to eat in a short time,” he said to the Piute boy. “We’ll likely have a hard day of it, and we want to start in with well-lined stomachs. Nomad, I suppose you watered the horses?”

The trapper started guiltily, a flush spreading over his hairy face.

“Waugh!” he grunted. “Buffler, I clean fergot it.”

The discovery that he had been so derelict seemed to arouse him, and he sprang with vigor to the back of Hide-rack, and, taking the reins of the other horses; he led them back across the ridge to the water hole, close by which they had made their night camp.

When he had watered the horses and returned, the breakfast was ready, the meat roasted to a turn, and the coffee smoking hot in the tin coffeepot.

Buffalo Bill called the Piute and his Apaches to the morning meal, avoiding any mention, for the time, of the things that had so disturbed them. It was the best course to pursue, under the circumstances. Yet they did not eat well—their appetites were gone for the time.

Only when the scout ordered a forward march, after breakfast, did Little Cayuse bring up the matter that troubled them.

“Apaches say um bad medicine, Pa-e-has-ka!” he said.

Buffalo Bill looked directly at him.

“You are the chief of these Apaches, Little Cayuse,” he stated. “And a chief must be brave, if his followers are to be brave. Tell your Apaches to go on and follow the trail they will find out there. You can see some of it here.” He pointed to the gigantic footprints. “Out there is the trail of an Indian horse, joining this one. Are you ready to obey orders, Cayuse, or shall I go on and leave you and the Apaches here?”

His tone was stern, for the first time.

Chappo, Yuppah, and Pedro looked at each other, a shrinking expression in their black eyes; but Little Cayuse, thus appealed to, straightened his muscular shoulders and lifted his head.

“Ai, Pa-e-has-ka,” he said, “Little Cayuse go on.”

He strode forth into the trail left by the big-footed man.

For a moment or two the three Apaches hung back, talking among themselves; then Chappo followed Little Cayuse, and the others, with shrugs of their naked shoulders and apprehensive glances at the mountains, went along behind him, each stepping in the tracks of the one before, Indian fashion.

“We’re ready, Nomad,” said Buffalo Bill, swinging to the big saddle on the back of Bear Paw.

Nick Nomad scorned to show the white feather where an Indian led the way. Without even a grunt he mounted Hide-rack, and the trailing of the big tracks and the hoofprints of the Indian pony was begun.

Yet though they went on, the Indians were silent and apprehensive.

The double trail led to and into the notch in the range; then on through the notch, with the mountains on each side growing higher and wilder. But nothing of a startling character was seen or heard. The notch lay in deep silence.

For a whole day the party went on, without trouble.

The next day began much the same. And they entered another mountain notch, like the first.

In places the way was so stony, being but naked rock, that even the Apaches could see no marks of hoof or footprint; but as it was so manifestly impossible for those they were following to have left this notch, the party continued on, reasonably sure that when the soil was of a friendly character they would find again the tracks they had so long followed.

And so it came about, as they descended from the notch into a scarred basin, which lay like a burned cup in a niche of the desolate mountains, that the trail was picked up again—the giant footsteps, supposed to be those of a man, and the hoofprints of the Indian pony.

During that long ride of a day and more the three white men talked at intervals of the mysterious disappearance from their midst of Toltec Tom, and of what it meant; how he had sneaked out of the camp, hiding his footsteps by using a blanket.

One thing gave them food for thought—it was not one of their blankets he had used; therefore, some one had come to him, bringing him the blanket with which he had hid his tracks.

From that fact they had reached the conclusion that the reason the pony tracks sank deep into the sandy places was because the animal carried double—bore Toltec Tom and whoever it was who had come to his assistance.

Who was that person?

They could not guess, unless it was the Red Feather who had stolen away the child from the town of Skyline, and had dropped the silver earring in the trail close by the knoll at Morgan’s. If true, the same person had dropped the sun-stamped gold piece.

That person, they had argued, was an Indian; and what they had seen the previous day indicated it was an Indian woman.

But had an Indian woman, the stealer of the child, also stolen or enticed Toltec Tom to leave the camp in that mysterious manner during the watches of the night?

Here was a puzzle.

Buffalo Bill admitted that its explanation rested in the future. All they could do now was to go on as they had been doing and see what would come to pass.

One of the things which developed was of a character to again frighten the Indians and cause Nomad to talk once more of the whiskizoos.

The vulture seen previously, or another similar bird, was observed to hover over the trail some distance before them, and then close its wings and drop, like a hawk descending on a rabbit.

The Indians went on, even after that; but when they came to the spot where the vulture had hovered and shot downward, and discovered at that spot, or near it, singular bird tracks in the sand, they were thrown into a panic.

“The devil bird!” said Chappo, speaking to his companions in their own language.

He stood up, wild-eyed, and repeated it to Little Cayuse in broken English, the other Apaches, grouped by him, shaking with renewed terror. Little Cayuse seemed almost as much moved.

Buffalo Bill rode forward and looked at the track of the “devil bird.”

There is the sand, close by the pony trail, where the marks of an immense claw of a bird, at least a yard in diameter. Yet the keen-eyed scout soon saw that, while a clever imitation, it had not been made by a bird, but by human fingers tracing it in the sand for a purpose.

That purpose, of course, was to frighten the Indian trailers. Which showed, also, that either the rider of the pony or the man who made the gigantic steps knew Indian trailers were following.

Buffalo Bill pointed this out to Little Cayuse and the Apaches, and argued the thing with them.

But the Apaches only looked at him stolidly now; they refused to go on again.

“Yer remembers thet story o’ Quicksilver John,” said Nomad, “and how a big eagle come an’ knocked him off ther cliff aidge down inter ther town of them queer Toltecs. I opine this is ther track o’ thet identickel eagle; and it war thet we saw in sky hyar, ’stead of a vulture.”

“Thunder, and carry one!” exploded Wild Bill. “Nomad, you old weenywurst, you’re as bad as the Apaches.”

“I ain’t believin’ in no devil bird,” expostulated the trapper; “but yer heerd yerself about thet eagle, how it grupped Quicksilver John in ther slack o’ his coat, and jest lifted him gentle down off ther clift inter ther town. Yer heerd thet.”

“But didn’t believe it.”

“Waugh! I’m believin’ it, now.”

Buffalo Bill was still talking to Little Cayuse and his Apaches.

“Stay behind, then,” he said at length, losing his patience at last; “we can get along without you! There’s the trail straight behind us, to the town of Skyline; take it, and get back there as quick as you can.”

He rode on, and, Wild Bill following, Nomad could not but do the same, if he did not want to hang back with the shrinking Indians.

Buffalo Bill did not glance back, but he had not ridden far when the sounds he heard told him that Little Cayuse and his Apaches were following. Their fears would not let them retreat alone; they wanted the protection of the white men.

Rounding some ridges in the sunburned valley, where a strange mist had seemed to rise, they came upon a number of bubbling mud springs, which emitted, with the ocherish mud, a fetid odor.

Close by these springs, and running off toward the barren flanks of the mountains, were a petrified forest of considerable size, but the trees were prostrate, and some of the trunks and branches were broken.

There were more of these mud springs, some with bases of red, where the overflowing mud, impregnated with that color, had built up fantastic formations.

One of these springs threw up its muddy jets at regular intervals, with a whistling sound which ended like the shriek of a madman.

Naturally, these things only tended to make the Indian trailers think they were being plunged now into some inferno presided over by demons. If it had seemed safe to run away incontinently, they would have done so.

Beyond the valley holding the petrified trees and the mud springs was another mountain notch.

The trail pointed straight into it. Buffalo Bill followed the trail. He kept his horse at a canter much of the time, so that the Piute boy and his Apaches were forced into a run. His object was twofold—to get over the ground as fast as possible, and to hurry the Indians along so quickly they would not be given time to consider too much the apparent perils they were running into.

The notch they entered now was narrower than the others, with steeper walls, of a cañonlike character, and high cliffs naked and sun-seared. In addition, many of the cliffs were banded and streaked with ocher and vermilion, and with various combinations of these, mixed in with duller colors. Sometimes it was as if the cliff walls had been laid up regularly with lines of stones of these colors. The tops were a fiery red. And as the narrow avenue before the party was of that same reddish hue, the general appearance was what one might imagine to be that of a gateway to the infernal regions.

The Indians, instead of hanging back, now kept close to the heels of the horses, with frightened glances cast now and then behind.

Old Nomad was as silent as the Indians themselves.

Even Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill did not talk much; the rainbowed avenue, pinching in about them, had a depressing effect.

“Waugh!” said Nomad, when daylight was seen shining like a white star ahead. “I’m glad ter git outer this hyar, anyhow. I’ll sing praises an’ shout halleluyers, when I hears water runnin’ ag’in and sees grass growin’.”

But there was no water and no grass, apparently, in the region beyond this red notch. A flat basin lay there, like the dried-up bottom of some old lake; except that near the middle of it the bottom seemed to have dropped out, and showed a ragged rent or hole, with precipice edges on the nearer side and sheer cliff walls, rainbowed, on the farther.

Smoke ascended in thin columns out of that deep hole, and though from where they were the hole seemed small, Buffalo Bill saw that really it was very large, covering a space of a mile or more in its widest diameter.

He drew rein involuntarily in the mouth of the notch, and sat looking off at that hole and the smoke columns mounting out of it into the turquoise-blue sky. One of the columns was like mist, and much larger than the others.

“Waugh!” ejaculated Nomad, drawing Hide-rack back by a jerk on the rein. “I been lookin’ fer ther Pit, and thar she is.”

Buffalo Bill took out his field glasses, screwed them into focus, took a long look, and passed them silently to Wild Bill.

The Indians stood wide-eyed and staring.

Little Cayuse swung his hand through the air, making that egg-shaped circle; it was his prayer to the Indian spirits to give him “life,” in this dire emergency, instead of “death.”

As they gazed at the queer valley and queer hole a score or more of mounted Indians bobbed into sight and swooped down on an object that had not yet attracted attention.

The Indians were so near the end of the notch that their painted bodies and faces, and their singular ornaments, could be seen; likewise the tuft of red feathers which each wore in his hair. And their yells reached the group in the notch.

The Indians swung ropes, presumably of rawhide, and cast them at the object, which apparently had been crouching on the ground beside a rock.

The object rose into full view, and was seen to be a man.

Buffalo Bill, with the glasses again in his hands, turned them full on the man whom the red-feathered Indians lassoed.

“The baron!” broke from his lips. “Baron von Schnitzenhauser!”

“Thunder, and carry one!”

“Waugh! It cain’t be; it jes’ cain’t be, Buffler!”

But there was no doubt about it. Buffalo Bill knew the baron too well. There was the round body and the slender legs, like a pippin on a pair of toothpicks; there was the characteristic clothing; even the baron’s frightened face could be seen distinctly with the glasses as the lariats threw him down.

There was but one thing strange and puzzling—the shoes the baron had on his feet; they bobbed up into full view as he fell forward under the pull of the ropes.

Then even that mystery was solved; the baron was wearing Dutch wooden shoes.

That explained the gigantic tracks in the sand. The baron, wearing those monstrous wooden shoes, had been the man following the tracks of the pony.

He had reached the spot where he now was, had been detected there by the red-feathered Indians, and was now their prisoner.

It was impossible to help him, though near enough to be distinctly seen, he was still too far off to be reached quickly.

Throwing him to the back of one of their ponies, the Indians bore him off, as Buffalo Bill turned his field glasses, for the second time, over to Wild Bill.

“Schnitzenhauser,” he said, as if it were difficult to believe, “and captured by the Red Feathers! That’s the Toltec town right ahead of us, in that hole, I think, and they’re taking him there. But we can’t do anything, just now.”

The only thing they could do was to watch and wonder while the Red Feathers made off and disappeared with their prisoner.

“Wooden shoes!” grunted Nomad almost incredulously. “What war ther Dutch fool w’arin’ them fur, somebody tell me!”

But no one was able to inform him.