“In a few minutes I will leave you,” said the scout. “It gravels me to let you slip out of my fingers, but I am sure that we are destined to meet again.”
Five minutes later Buffalo Bill, armed with his own and Holmes’ weapons, walked out of the cabin and entered the bushes. He appeared to be taking a direction that would bring him to the trail that led over the hills to Taos.
Rixton Holmes smiled in satisfaction. He had noticed that the scout moved slowly, and he believed that the wound in the side troubled him, and would prevent quick movement away from the flat.
The enemy was out of sight when Holmes signaled to the Navahos. Instantly the band wheeled and started on a run for the cabin.
On arriving at the structure, Holmes briefly explained to Raven Feather what had happened, and pointed to the east. “He has gone up that way,” he said. “Send out three or four of your swiftest braves, and they’ll overhaul him.”
At that moment the king of scouts was on the western side of the cabin. His weakness had been assumed. The wound was not troubling him much, and he felt able to do his usual work. Entering the bushes, he had hurried to the ravine, made a detour, circled Matt Holmes’ cabin, and, under cover of the brush on the western side of the flat, had crept to a spot not twenty yards from the cabin door, about which Raven Feather and his Navahos were standing.
After four of the Indians had departed to trail the fugitive, he heard Rixton Holmes ask Raven Feather: “Where is the girl?” And he heard the chief answer: “She is in the cave with my brother Crow-killer.”
CHAPTER III.
BUFFALO BILL FALLS INTO A TRAP.
In reaching his position, the king of scouts had covered his trail as far as was possible for him to do so. But he knew that the only effect of his precaution would be to delay the arrival of the four Navahos who had been sent out to run him to earth.
At the most, he had half an hour in which to continue his retreat or make an effort to regain the ground he had lost at the cabin. Circumstances had compelled him to relinquish an advantage, but his mind was made up not to leave the flat until he had had another accounting with the murderer of Matt and Jared Holmes.