He spoke truly. The two scouts who had communicated with Steve Hathaway and the troops were hurrying toward him, having sent up smoke signals to hasten the soldiers forward.
Their report decided Buffalo Bill to remain where he was until the cavalry got up, but to satisfy Mainwaring he suggested that the latter should take a couple of fresh men and go over to the cliff to see whether he could find any tracks where he said he had seen the two girls.
Norfolk Ben, however, volunteered to go, and Mainwaring said he would take him and let the scouts remain.
As Buffalo Bill had no belief that there was really any one where Mainwaring said he had seen people he made no objection to this arrangement. He did not know that the young rancher was really rushing into deadly danger, or he would not have let him go out of his sight.
But his attention was soon drawn away from the fighting Indians and everything else by the sight of the carbines and sabers of cavalrymen glittering in the pass to the north, and he rode up to greet Captain Meinhold and Lieutenant Lawson, and to take Steve Hathaway by the hand and tell him that he had done nobly and well.
“I did my level best, mate,” replied Steve. “I had my life to pay for. Now that I’ve done it, I suppose I’ll be no more use to you.”
“Yes, Steve, you will. I’ll enroll you in my band of scouts of the Department of the Platte, if you wish, and you can ride and fight alongside of me if it suits you. If it doesn’t, I’ll do anything else I can to help you. All you’ve got to do is to say what you want, and you shall have it if I can get it for you.”
“Thank you, Bill. I know I’m not deserving of much in the way of kindness after the life I’ve led, but I’ll try to turn over a new leaf, and we’ll see how things work out as we go along. Has there been much of a fight down there?”
“I reckon there has, and it isn’t over yet. If they keep on for a while longer there won’t be much more of them left than there was of the Kilkenny cats after their scrap.”
“What are they?”