The chief threw the revolvers and knives to the shore, then produced a thin rawhide rope, unwinding it from about his own body, where it had been concealed by the gold-ornamented panther skin which he wore round his shoulders and waist.
Without a word the scout submitted to having his hands tied and a length of the rawhide rope passed loosely round his ankles. The end of this rope the chief retained in his hand, so that if the prisoner tried to run he could jerk it and trip him.
The chief motioned, and Buffalo Bill walked on across the bridge, followed by the Indians who had chased him, and was surrounded at once by those on the other side.
Closing round him and the chief, the warriors formed a guard and conducted him hurriedly along the narrow mountain path until they came to a series of steps cut in the stone and leading from the top of the precipice down into the hole which held the Toltec town.
While descending these steps, which he saw could be readily guarded by a few men, Buffalo Bill had a good view of the town lying in the bottom of the deep cavity, the hole, as has been said, being above a mile in diameter in its widest part.
The houses were flat-roofed, and most of them seemed to be communal, indicating a large population. The streets were winding and narrow. But near the heart of the town the thoroughfares were wider, and a large, circular street was there, inclosing a low dome-shaped building whose roof flashed in the sun as if it were of beaten gold. Close by it, seeming a part of it, were other buildings that were smaller.
Near that dome-shaped structure rose what at first the scout took to be the smoke of a large fire, but when he was lower down on the long flight of steps he saw that a pool of some kind lay there, sending up steam, and he recalled the mud pots he had seen hissing and bubbling by the way he had come from Skyline.
He saw, also, as he got still farther down with his captors, that the houses were of stone, a grayish-white marble apparently, and that they were richly ornamented with gold, or with something which glittered like that metal.
The stone stairway led to the circular street before the domed house, and there a great concourse of red-feathered Indians, whose armlets, leg bands, and other ornaments flashed in the sun.
In their midst, standing as on a pedestal, he beheld a white woman, clothed in white, fringed deerskins, with a circlet of gold on her abundant black hair, and behind her, his face pale and his manner nervous, stood Tom Conover, staring at the captive scout.