Chapter Twenty Five.
Poor Geoffry Again.
True to Vipan’s prediction, the first person they met on their return to camp was Smokestack Bill.
Leaning against a waggon-wheel, lazily puffing at his pipe, his faithful Winchester ever ready to hand, the scout watched their approach as imperturbably as though he had parted with his friend but half-an-hour back, instead of nearly a month ago, when he had watched the latter ride off with Mahto-sapa’s band into what looked perilously like the very jaws of death. But he could not restrain a covert guffaw as he marked in what company he now met his friend again.
“Hello, Bill! Any news?” cried the latter, as they rode up to the waggon corral. “By the way, I must call round and collect that twenty dollars from Seth Davis.”
“Guess you’ll have to trade his scalp to raise it,” was the grim reply. “And you’ll find it drying in the smoke of an Ogallalla teepe.”
“That so?”
“It is. Couple o’ nights after War Wolf was run off, a crowd of ’em came along and shot Seth in the doorway of his store. Then they cleared out all the goods and burnt down the whole shebang. They couldn’t nohow get rid of the idea that he’d had a hand in giving War Wolf away.”
“Well, we’ve just stood off a handful of reds.”
“Sho! With the young lady too! Say, stranger”—he broke off, turning to Geoffry—“are you the ‘tenderfoot’ them reds was after?”