“I can’t think what has come to our government, that it does not make them either obey the law or wipe them out. If we only had some of them on our ranches down in Texas for a few weeks we’d make them precious sorry for themselves, I can tell you!”
“I wish you had them there,” said Cody, with a laugh.
“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I don’t think you know very much about these people you are talking of.”
The two friends looked up hastily.
They had thought that they were alone on the veranda, but a man had stolen up to them as silently as a cat while they were talking, and he stood at the young rancher’s shoulder, less than a yard away.
He was a big, broad-chested man, with a coarse, bloated face, a swaggering figure, and a bristling red mustache.
Buffalo Bill recognized him at once.
He was Simon Ketchum, known to everybody as a professional gambler and suspected to be the spy and agent of the Death Riders in the settlement of Danger Divide.
“I think I ought to know something about the Death Riders,” said the border king, after he had looked at the man in silence for a few moments. “I am in their black books, as you probably know very well.”