“Hello! Look up there! Ho, they’re gone!” suddenly cried Mainwaring, pointing to a cliff far over to the right of the party, fully two miles away.
“What’s gone? Your senses?” asked Buffalo Bill, noticing how wildly the young rancher gazed at the place where he himself could see nothing but bleak, bare rock.
“No, no—the girls! I saw them plainly over there on that rock; and it seemed as if a party of men was hurrying on with them!” said Mainwaring.
“I think you must have been mistaken, or some one else would have seen them, too,” replied Buffalo Bill. “They could hardly have got out of sight so soon, either, for you see there is neither tree nor bush on that rock.”
“I certainly did see them, and they disappeared so quickly that it looked as if they had sunk right down into the earth.”
“I’ve had just such visions,” said the border king, smiling. “And it was when I was in love, too.”
“It was no vision; it was real,” persisted Mainwaring.
“Well, after the fight is over down there we’ll see what we can find in the way of tracks up there,” said the king of the scouts.
Then, his face all aglow with pleasure, he cried:
“Here’s some news coming for us now! Here are the men we sent to meet the soldiers coming back!”