“Marse Cody!” the faithful black repeated, beckoning to him.
Buffalo Bill had been rooted to the spot in amazement for a moment, but now he rushed eagerly up to the wagon.
He jumped into it, and a new surprise awaited him. There, stretched out on the floor, he saw the form of Mr. Doyle, pallid as death and covered with blood from a gunshot wound through the breast and another through the leg.
Bending down swiftly, Buffalo Bill placed his hand over the man’s heart and felt his pulse. To his joy he found that he still lived, and by a swift examination of the wounds, which he dressed and bound up, he convinced himself that he even had a fair chance of recovery.
While he was attending to the wounded man in this manner, with Mainwaring looking eagerly on through the flap of the wagon tent, Norfolk Ben said nothing.
The poor negro was in a bad way. He had been cut over the shoulder with a tomahawk, which had inflicted a mere flesh wound, but one which, nevertheless, had cost him the loss of a great deal of blood.
It was also plainly to be seen that he had been hit over the head with the butt of a gun with a violence that would have cracked the skull of any one but a negro.
He sat on the floor of the wagon, nursing his sore head, until Buffalo Bill rose up from his ministrations to the unconscious old man.
Then he said:
“Marse Cody!—dem two sweet gals! Dem two cherubims! Whar am dey?”