CHAPTER XXV.

A VILLAIN IN FLIGHT.

Lieutenant Joel Barlow was clever in his flight.

He knew that it was Buffalo Bill who had appeared at the corner of the wall, and with whom he had left Smallpox Dave fighting. And he feared the scout above all other men, for Buffalo Bill was noted as a hater of wrongs of all kinds, and as a relentless punisher of wrongdoers.

Barlow’s first intention was to gain the point where the horses had been secreted by Smallpox Dave, and with these horses make a wild flight. But he was so quickly pursued by the scout that, instead of making that attempt at once, he simply dropped down in the darkness, in a low, grassy swale, and lay there, without motion or word.

Fortunately for him, the girl had again fainted, and when he dropped her to the ground she lay there as one dead. Thus it had come about that when the scout, by pressing his ear to the earth, sought for some sound of the fleeing man no sound reached him.

Not until Buffalo Bill had engaged again with Smallpox Dave and a hot struggle was for a few moments in progress did Barlow dare to climb to his feet, when he lifted the girl in his arms, and continued his flight.

Thus while the scout was threatening Smallpox Dave and getting from him Barlow’s name and the name of the girl, the desperate lieutenant gained the screen of bushes where the horses were; and he took with him the scout’s own horse, which he encountered and captured.

“Good-by, Smallpox Dave,” he whispered; “you served me well once, but I can’t wait for you. I’d like to stay to help you; but self-protection first, you know. And it’s get out of here now for me, or a drumhead court-martial and shot to death by rifle bullets as a traitor; at any rate, I’ll be counted a traitor, when I have put this thing through. I’m off for the nuggets; and if you aren’t with me, why, then I shan’t have to divide.”

As he lifted the girl, intending to hoist her to the back of the horse, she came partly from out of the fainting state in which she had so long been.

“Poor little girl!” he said. “Yet you’ll think I’m the finest fellow in the world in a week or so, see if you don’t. Just now I suppose you’d try to scratch my eyes out, like dear Mother McGee, if you only could! My efforts were always unappreciated.”

The desperate devil in his make-up had broken bounds and now controlled him body and soul.

Barlow had been wild and reckless at school, and at West Point, where he narrowly escaped being dismissed in disgrace. He had gambled and drank, and got away with the small fortune left to him by his father, who was long since dead. In Baltimore he had become mixed up in a quarrel of a disgraceful nature, and had stabbed a man to death; but his friends swore so glibly at the trial that he was acquitted on the ground of self-defense. After that Barlow had tried for a time to lead a more decent existence. He had been sent out to this post on the Texas frontier. Then he began to gamble and to drink again.

He laughed to himself as he lifted the girl; laughed at the thought of outwitting the scout; laughed at the consternation which his deed of desperation would create in the fort; and while thus laughing cast a glimpse into the near future.

“I’ll get that gold, and then off for some other country!”

The girl moaned as he threw her brutally on the back of the horse and took the reins of the other horses. Climbing into the saddle he held the girl in front of him, and permitted the horses to walk quietly out of the little trees and away over the soft grass, which was so like a carpet that their hoofs made hardly a sound.

Yet this sound Buffalo Bill heard, as he left Smallpox Dave and started again in pursuit of Barlow.

But crafty Barlow, drawing rein and sitting in silence, also heard the scout, and he drew the girl closer to him.

“My dear, now we’re going to have a ride such as you read about!”

She shivered as she came back to consciousness, or at least partial consciousness.

“Where am I? And where are you taking me?”

“My dear May, you are with your ever-devoted servant, and we are off for a little ride. We’ll make it a pleasure trip, and perhaps there will be a wedding come of it very shortly. You don’t know me? Well, just at present I’m Reckless Joe, known hitherto as Lieutenant Joel Barlow. And here we go!”

He drove his spurs into the flanks of the horse he was riding, lashed the others, and was soon riding at wild speed away from the fort and straight out into the deep darkness of the night.

He heard the whiplike report of a revolver, and knew that Buffalo Bill had fired it to rouse the fort.

“Catch me who can!” he muttered. “It will be a long race, and I know where I am going.”