CHAPTER XXVI.

BUFFALO BILL SAVES TEN.

During the darkness and excitement of the expected attack, while the Sioux were pulling themselves together, the prisoners were forgotten. Price managed to slip his bonds, and released Bloody Ike; not that he had any particular love for the ex-miner, but because misery loves company, and rogues cling together in adversity.

The pair found some blankets and arms, and mingling with the braves worked down the stream until they came to the motte of timber at the river bank. They preferred to remain prisoners among the Indians to being captured by the soldiers, which they momentarily expected to charge on the Indian encampment.

The Indians, too, believed that U. S. Cavalry only awaited daylight to charge. That explained why the red men had failed to follow Cody and his party.

Scouts were hurriedly sent out to investigate the position and number of the enemy, and reported that they could not find any troops. Daylight revealed the great plain, instead of bristling with U. S. soldiery, as barren as the evening before.

The Indians were mystified. They had heard the bugle call, the giving of orders, and the galloping of officers’ horses. Spies, too, had been in the camp by the dozen, according to the reports of those who had come in contact with Cody, and the ponies had been stampeded and scattered over the plain.

The Indians felt great relief that the army had vanished, but they held a superstitious presentiment that the paleface riders and walkaheaps might drop from the clear sky, or arise out of the ground at any moment.

Braves were sent out to round up the ponies, and a council of the chiefs decided that it would be better to move to the hills and find some spot where such a surprise would be impossible.

Price and Bloody Ike hid in the timber until they heard the Sioux move away; then they came out and searched the camp ground for food. Some pieces of buffalo meat were found and broiled over the coals, and eaten without salt.

“Pretty tough lug for you and me, Ike.”

Ike growled his discontent. He felt that if he had refused to mix up with Price he would not be in such desperate circumstances. To be landed in the middle of a hostile country, with nothing but enemies on all sides, was no joke. To be there without a mount was doubly serious.

Although the distance to the hills looked short, these men knew that it was a long and tiresome journey to those unfamiliar with pedestrianism.

Price noted that the Sioux traveled in a southeasterly direction; he decided to proceed west, hoping to be able to find a remote ranch, from which they could steal food and horses. Almost any horse would be a relief from this leg-wearying march.

And thus it came about that late that night two tired and hungry men, searching for a hiding and resting place among the bluffs and gashes of the ever-changing hills, came over the rim of a basin, to see a cheerful fire at its bottom and a group of men sitting around it.

“Good!” almost shouted Price. “A party of gold seekers, who have crossed from the Black Hills. They are prospecting these hills and are no doubt well supplied with provisions and horses. Perhaps we can annex--with your knowledge of mining and my knack of tickling human nature.”

“Safer to steal it and keep away from these fellows. If they lose a couple of horses and some duffle, they’ll lay it to the Indians.”

“But this doesn’t look like an easy place to sneak out of, with a horse attached.”

“That’s so, but in that case we’d better annex the grub, an’ wait for a better show. If ye mingle with these fellows it is just so many more who know where we are, and if any soldiers meet up with them and ask for you, they’ll connect.”

“You’re right, Ike, but I’m so hungry I don’t believe I can wait to make a good steal.”

“Leave that to me. You stay up here in the rocks an’ chew your boot leg, while I go down to look things over. I hope I get a grab at the powder supply.”

Bloody Ike crept over the rocks and around the pitfalls of the broken buttes, and slowly made the descent toward the flickering camp fire. He wondered how horses ever had been landed where he could see them beyond the fire. In his opinion such horses must have wings. Ike, himself, had no flying machine, and he was minus much cuticle from his head to his heels.

The ex-miner was weary and half famished, and with the slipping and sliding among the jagged corners he would have looked, in daylight, like a candidate for a hospital. He was “Bloody” Ike, indeed.

But he was bent on mischief, and determined to accomplish it. He cared naught who these men were, or what they represented--it was their food he was after, their horses, if possible, and last, but not least, their powder, if they had any.

He crept close to the peaceful camp where ten men sat around a cheerful blaze, smoking their pipes and relating stories of the trail and the mines. The party was made up of Buffalo Bill and his pards, Avery and the boy, and three miners with whom the scout had connected in the foothills. The miners were glad to meet English-speaking men, after several months in the wilds, where the only human beings they had seen were Indians.

Buffalo Bill was glad to avail himself of the knowledge these men had of this part of the country.

The rock-bound fastness of the camping place recommended itself to him as a headquarters while in that part of the world, and combined good water supply and grazing for the horses, where they could not be stampeded. The miners had six mounts, and had improvised a trap at the only entrance to the high-walled “dip,” where a horse could enter or depart.

A man could scale the cliffs, if he had his nerve with him, but no animal with hoofs, unless it be a mountain goat, could expect to enter or leave by any other source.

In other ages great clefts of rock had dropped from the cliffs above and formed dark caverns and numerous hiding places, where one familiar with them might defy an army to dislodge him. Here the miners had arranged their lodges and had little fear of attack by Indians.

As Bloody Ike stole nearer and nearer, he gasped with surprise. He recognized Buffalo Bill and some of his pards. Several times in the past he had made use of the most devilish means he could devise to put them out of the way, and he had yearned for one more opportunity.

“Oh! for his powder and fuse!”

But there might be a chance--he could see shovels and picks leaning against a rock near the fire. Some of these men must be miners and if so they would be apt to make use of powder or explosive in some form.

Ike was near enough to catch some words of the conversation when the men arose, knocked the ash from their pipes, and going back under the side of a great leaning rock, rolled in their blankets and said good night.

For a time--a long time, it seemed to him--Ike waited until he felt sure the men were all asleep, and then he began a quiet investigation of the place on his own hook.

The fire had sunk away to a few embers, the flickering blaze from which cast fantastic and dancing shadows on the rocks and walls. Indeed, the stealthy figure might have been mistaken for a part of the fitting picture painted by the fire gods.

Ike found food and regaled himself and stuffed his pockets for his guilty partner on the rim above--and then, “Eureka!” Here were two cans of blasting powder--and a fuse! a big coil of it!

A devilish plot began to form in the abnormal gray matter of the bad man’s brain.

Here were some of the men he hated most; here were stores of provision and good horses. In this stronghold he and Price could hide until search for them should be exhausted--if there were none having a prior claim--and here, at his hand, were the means of jumping the claims of those who came before and taking possession of all.

How easy it would be--all that seemed necessary was to attach the fuse--so; and place the keg under the side of this pile of rocks--so; and softly pull some of them into a position around and on top of it--so.

The mass of loose stones and blocks of granite, that had been cleared from the almost level floor of the camping place, lay in just the right position to be hurled in their deadly mission, full upon the sleeping men.

“Yes, how easy it would be!”

All he would have to do would be to find a match in his ragged pocket--scrape it lightly over his trousers leg--so; and apply it to the end of the fuse.

Oh, yes, his nerve had always stood him in good stead--when he lighted a fuse he always stood over it after other men had fled, to see that the fuse was well fired and not going out.

How easy! It lighted the first time! It was running splendidly! He had cut a generous length of fuse to give him ample time to get well beyond the terrific concussion, which would follow in a few seconds.

He must go.

With the agility of the experienced mountaineer he darted over the rocks, caught up the other can of powder and some of the provision bags, and sprang away into the shadows and disappeared among the rocks.

Buffalo Bill was restless. He was not given to visions or presentiments, and did not believe in forerunners; but when a decaying molar got its tantrums and began to put in the kicks of a wild horse, it disturbed his slumbers. He bore the pain as long as possible and then crawled out softly, that he might not disturb his companions.

The scout had determined to try the solace of his pipe.

As he approached the almost lifeless coals of the evening’s fire he was surprised to see a man arise from the dense shadow of a pile of rock and dart away.

He at first thought it was one of the miners, but the apparent haste and stealthy step aroused the scout’s suspicion.

He stepped along and peered behind the rock pile to see if there might be others.

He saw only a little sparkling point of light that would hardly have burned a baby’s finger.

But the scout stared in horror for an instant, then bounded over the rocks like a madman.

He tore at the spluttering spark with his bare hands, but it was already beyond the grasp of his fingers under the rock pile.

It was crawling away rapidly, its single baleful eye snapping defiantly at its pursuer.

Buffalo Bill plunged his hands among the rocks and tore them away with insane fury.

He hurled them right and left, at the same time shouting:

“Turn out, boys! Get behind the rocks! A blast!”

Then he came to the powder can. He felt its rim, and he saw the fatal spark, but where the fuse was attached he could not see.

He grasped the can with both hands and ripped it from its surroundings.

The sputtering light clung to it.

Like lightning he raised the can above his head and threw it far out over a chasm that yawned a rod away.

A roar and blinding flash in mid-air told how near the scout had been to being too late.

The concussion threw him and others who had jumped up at his shouts, from their feet. But no one was injured.

Torches and lanterns were lighted and a search of the camp begun.

“It’s the work of Bloody Ike, the powder fiend,” declared Hickok, and the others agreed with him.

“He has got away with your other can of powder and the coil of fuse,” said the scout to the miners.

“And every can of that powder is worth a small fortune, ’way out here,” mourned one of the men.

“I didn’t suppose there was a devil bad enough, in existence, to attempt to kill ten men in cold blood,” said Hickok.

“If it’s Ike Pelletier, who once handled the explosives in the Bridger range mines, he’d murder a regiment for a hundred dollars. And I’d give twice that to get next to him for a few minutes,” said Avery.

“Well,” said the scout, “I am convinced that he is in this basin now--he can’t be far off, for I saw the man who lighted the fuse running away--and we must hunt the villain down and see that he pays the penalty for his crimes.”

“That is all right from your standpoint,” said Avery. “You represent the law. But I represent justice swift and sure, with no chance for a slip-up. If I see Ike first, you will never take him back for trial.”

“Didn’t you see him that day at the surveyors’ shanty?” asked the scout.

“Yes, I saw both men, but I didn’t recognize either of them, yet I thought the one with whiskers resembled some one I had known.”

“If you have a bullet for him, there must be a story behind it?” suggested one of the miners.

“There is, but it is too long to tell to-night, besides, we’ve got to capture the scoundrel.”