“Well, we will have to go after it, and you will have to show us where it is,” said the man. “But first I must take you down here to show you to somebody here who is anxious to see you.”
“To show me to somebody?” I exclaimed, lost in wonder, as the redskin who held my horse turned me around. I wasn’t terrified any longer. My fright had given place to something that was stronger than fear, and I was amazed at the words the man said. “Somebody” wanted to see me, and I wondered who that somebody could be. Could it be Coyote Bill? If it was, I was on nettles. He would propose to me to “become one of them,” and when I refused, what would happen to me? I resolved to follow that matter up a little.
“Yes, sir; there’s a man that wants to see you,” said he. “He has got a name around here that you don’t want to know too much about, too.”
“Know too much about him? Why, I know about him already. Is it Coyote Bill?”
The man seemed surprised that I spoke his name so readily. He looked at me as though he hardly knew what to say.
“How did you learn what his name was?” he asked at length.
“One of my chums guessed it,” I replied. “Anybody who knows anything about Coyote Bill would know that he didn’t come on that ranch for nothing.”
The man said no more, but I was satisfied from the little he did say that I was right in my conjectures. There was another thing that was strange to me, and the longer I thought of it the more bewildered I became. This white man had been to school, had received the benefits of an education, and how did it come that he was there among the Indians? There was something strange about him and Coyote Bill, and I wanted to get at the bottom of it, but I may add that I never did. I took a good look at the man who rode by my side, and I didn’t see anything more desperate about him than I had seen about Coyote Bill. Take his weapons and buckskin suit away from him, and dress him up in fine clothing, and he would have passed for a business man anywhere.
There was another thing that worried me as I rode along. I wondered if any such capture had ever been made by hostile Indians before. The savages paid no more attention to me than if I was one of themselves, but seemed to have given me up entirely to the white man. As soon as we got through the willows and came out on the prairie again, we rode along in single file, the white man just ahead and the others bringing up the rear, so escape was simply impossible. I knew I must see that “somebody” who was so anxious to see me, and I nerved myself for the test. I had nothing to fear until I saw him.
“Can these Indians speak English?” I asked, at length.