Throwing him to the back of one of their ponies, the Indians bore him off, as Buffalo Bill turned his field glasses, for the second time, over to Wild Bill.
“Schnitzenhauser,” he said, as if it were difficult to believe, “and captured by the Red Feathers! That’s the Toltec town right ahead of us, in that hole, I think, and they’re taking him there. But we can’t do anything, just now.”
The only thing they could do was to watch and wonder while the Red Feathers made off and disappeared with their prisoner.
“Wooden shoes!” grunted Nomad almost incredulously. “What war ther Dutch fool w’arin’ them fur, somebody tell me!”
But no one was able to inform him.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE BARON AND TOLTEC TOM.
Schnitzenhauser, a prisoner in the town of the mysterious Toltecs, to which he had been taken hastily, was met there by a white man, who visited him in the little prison into which he had been thrown.
It was a marvelous prison—a gem of marble and gold; Schnitzenhauser had never even dreamed of anything like it, and he had been carefully inspecting it. The bars across the narrow window seemed to be of pure gold, though, as they were so hard and strong, some alloy must have been used. The lock and the key of the door, also, seemed to be gold.
The German was wondering if he could not in some manner wrench those gold bars away, and, on getting out, carry them off with him, for he hoped to escape, and it was a sudden lust for gold which had brought him into his present peril.
While the German was testing the gold bars by feeling of them and licking them with his tongue, the door was opened, and the white man mentioned came in.