"I will be ready," said Pond.
The Texan now left, and Pond watched him as he hurried off to the stable.
"The man hates Wild Bill with a deadly hatred!" he murmured. "I must learn the cause. Perhaps it is a providence that I have fallen in with him, and I have concluded to keep his company to the Black Hills. But I must call the landlord and close up my account before the other comes back with the horses."
The German was so put out by the sudden giving up of a room, which he hoped to make profitable, that he asked an extra day's rent, and to his surprise, got it.
CHAPTER VI.
OFF TO THE HILLS.
It was some time before Wild Bill became fully conscious after he was carried into the saloon, and when he did come to he raved wildly about the red-haired man he shot in Abilene, and insisted it was his ghost, and not a real man, he had seen.
Bill's friends tried to cheer and reassure him, and got several stiff draughts of liquor down his throat, which finally "set him up." as they said, till he began to look natural. But he still talked wildly and strangely.
"I told you, Joe," he said to his old friend; "I told you my time was nigh up. This hasn't been my first warning. That Abilene ghost has been before me a thousand times, and he has hissed that same word, 'sister,' in my ear."
"Bah! old boy. What's the use of your talking foolish. You've seen no ghost. That red-haired chap was as live as you are."