After an hour’s journey, Buffalo Bill heard a suspicious noise in the bushes in front of him. He instantly left the trail, and, climbing the hill, got behind a bowlder.
He was scarcely out of sight before two white men appeared on the trail directly below him.
One was tall, lean, and angular, with a broken nose and an ugly disfigurement of the lower lip. One-half of the lip was of treble the thickness of the other half, and hung down so as to disclose the teeth, which were long, yellow, and fanglike. The eyes were small and piercing, and looked out under shaggy brows that were contracted in a habitual scowl.
The other man was shorter in stature, had a round, red face, with a happy-go-lucky expression. He was red-haired, and wore a shoe-brush mustache. The tall man was smooth-faced.
The king of scouts recognized the men as two of the most dangerous and desperate criminals in the West. Before their association with Black-face Ned they had been allied with the border ruffians of Kansas. In that State Buffalo Bill had met them, and the short man bore upon his body the marks of a luckless encounter with the king of scouts.
“Shorty Sands and Flag-pole Jack,” muttered the scout, under his breath. “I’ll bet the third rascal is that sneak, Bat Wason. The three were pards in the old Kansas days, and Wason was the slickest and the most dangerous scoundrel of the trio.”
To the scout’s intense satisfaction, the desperadoes stopped at the point of Buffalo Bill’s departure from the trail, and began an earnest conversation.
“The Indian knows his biz,” said Shorty Sands, “and I’ll gamble he has made a killin’. Thar’s shore no use in gittin’ skeered, fer Thunder Cloud hed only a pigeon-hearted Hualapi ter contend with.”
“Don’t ye fool yerself,” responded Flag-pole Jack, with a deepening of his scowl. “Ther ole kunnel war too foxy ter give away the hull business. He allowed thar war only one man with him. Mebbe he lied. Mebbe Thunder Cloud slipped his neck inter a trap when he pranced inter the camp of ther kunnel. I ain’t plottin’ ter foller his example. Not by a overwhelmin’ majority.”
“What’s yer idee?” inquired Sands.