CHAPTER XXIII.

BUFFALO BILL’S CAPTURE.

The Red Feathers who had discovered and captured the baron had also discovered the presence of Buffalo Bill’s party, or had been informed by the woman.

This was not immediately manifest, however. Buffalo Bill drew his party back from the mouth of the mountain notch, intending to go into concealment until by careful scouting he could learn something about the Toltec town supposed to be in that hole in the plain.

By and by Buffalo Bill set out alone, intending to steal along the base of the mountains which girt the valley, hoping to come on something which would aid him. He had two reasons now for wanting to get into the town which he was sure existed. The child was there, and so was the baron. Toltec Tom had so apparently deserted him that he concluded not to trouble about the fellow, unless fate threw the latter in his way.

The great scout had proceeded nearly a mile when a sudden outburst of yells behind him, accompanied by a cracking of rifles, told him that his friends had been attacked.

He began to backtrack at once, to assist them in this emergency, when he discovered that some Red Feathers had got in between himself and the camp.

Suddenly he found himself between hills, on the edge of a cañon, with no way of crossing but an Indian footbridge of ropes, a thatching of ropes and reeds—a swaying, flimsy structure, hanging over the cañon and reaching from side to side.

There was no time for hesitation, and Buffalo Bill rushed upon the swaying bridge, in an effort to cross.

In the middle of it he halted and drew his revolvers. By apparent intention, he had been driven upon that bridge by the Indians who had chased him, that he might be corralled, for other Indians now appeared in the path on the other side of the cañon, closing in on him there, as the others were closing in on him from the rear.

On each side Indians dashed to the ends of the bridge and began to hack at the ropes.

Buffalo Bill was trapped, and death by bullets or arrows, or by a drop into the cañon, seemed to await him, for even though he slew the foremost of his foes he could not escape the other Red Feathers hurrying to their aid.

Nevertheless, he stood defiantly on the swaying structure as the Indians hacked at the ropes which held it at the ends. His threatening revolvers kept the Red Feathers from rushing out upon him, yet it was soon apparent that they desired to have him as a prisoner, rather than drop him into the cañon or riddle him with their gold-headed arrows.

One of them, apparently a chief, put up his hand, shouted something that stopped the work of cutting the ropes, and stepped to the end of the bridge at the farther side. Buffalo Bill did not know it, but the chief was old Fire Top.

What the feathered chief said Buffalo Bill did not comprehend, beyond the fact that his gestures told he wanted the white man to surrender; the language was one the great white scout had never heard, though he was familiar with many Indian dialects.

He threw his revolvers down on the bridge, and followed them with his hunting knife. It was suicidal to do anything else. The Red Feathers had him at their mercy.

Then he held up his empty hands, palms outward, in token of peace and submission.

A yell of triumph burst from the throats of the bedizened Indians, and the chief who had spoken stepped out on the bridge to secure the discarded weapons, while his warriors on the shores set arrows to their bows and stood ready to slay the white man if he showed treachery.

Old Fire Top was a glittering fellow, shining with ornaments of gold and silver, and with a breastplate of gold which nearly covered his bosom and glittered brightly in the sun. It was native gold, fashioned rudely by Indian hammers; in its center shone that rayed image of the sun.

“Gold must be cheap as clay round these parts,” was the scout’s reflection. “I wonder where they got it all. It’s a good thing for them that the white men over yonder at Skyline don’t know about it, and it stands them in hand to keep the secret close.”

It was a thought which caused him to realize how great was his peril. Only by killing the white men who fell into their hands, and covering these mountains with a pall of terror, could the Red Feathers keep from the outer world all knowledge of the wonderful stores of gold which it seemed they undoubtedly possessed.

The chief threw the revolvers and knives to the shore, then produced a thin rawhide rope, unwinding it from about his own body, where it had been concealed by the gold-ornamented panther skin which he wore round his shoulders and waist.

Without a word the scout submitted to having his hands tied and a length of the rawhide rope passed loosely round his ankles. The end of this rope the chief retained in his hand, so that if the prisoner tried to run he could jerk it and trip him.

The chief motioned, and Buffalo Bill walked on across the bridge, followed by the Indians who had chased him, and was surrounded at once by those on the other side.

Closing round him and the chief, the warriors formed a guard and conducted him hurriedly along the narrow mountain path until they came to a series of steps cut in the stone and leading from the top of the precipice down into the hole which held the Toltec town.

While descending these steps, which he saw could be readily guarded by a few men, Buffalo Bill had a good view of the town lying in the bottom of the deep cavity, the hole, as has been said, being above a mile in diameter in its widest part.

The houses were flat-roofed, and most of them seemed to be communal, indicating a large population. The streets were winding and narrow. But near the heart of the town the thoroughfares were wider, and a large, circular street was there, inclosing a low dome-shaped building whose roof flashed in the sun as if it were of beaten gold. Close by it, seeming a part of it, were other buildings that were smaller.

Near that dome-shaped structure rose what at first the scout took to be the smoke of a large fire, but when he was lower down on the long flight of steps he saw that a pool of some kind lay there, sending up steam, and he recalled the mud pots he had seen hissing and bubbling by the way he had come from Skyline.

He saw, also, as he got still farther down with his captors, that the houses were of stone, a grayish-white marble apparently, and that they were richly ornamented with gold, or with something which glittered like that metal.

The stone stairway led to the circular street before the domed house, and there a great concourse of red-feathered Indians, whose armlets, leg bands, and other ornaments flashed in the sun.

In their midst, standing as on a pedestal, he beheld a white woman, clothed in white, fringed deerskins, with a circlet of gold on her abundant black hair, and behind her, his face pale and his manner nervous, stood Tom Conover, staring at the captive scout.

“The traitor!” was the scout’s indignant thought, as he flashed Conover a look of high scorn. “This is worse than that affair of the Niobrara.”

A way opened before him between ranks of Indians, and Buffalo Bill was conducted through it into a stone prison.

When he was thrust in, and the door banged behind him, a human form flung itself against him.

“Ach! Donnerwetter! Dis is awful!”

It was the baron.