“I wouldn’t be in Phelps’ shoes for a bushel of dinero,” thought Benner, “if he tries to do what Buffalo Bill don’t want him to.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE ENEMY’S CAMP.
From rising ground, where Buffalo Bill had left his pards on the previous occasion when he had gone alone into Phelps’ hangout, the scout surveyed the situation at the hostile ranch.
Everything was quiet about the buildings, but it was the brooding quiet that oftentimes precedes a violent storm. Cowboys passed and re-passed slowly under the scout’s eyes, but they seemed to avoid the log house in which Phelps made his headquarters.
In that building, no doubt, lay Jake Phelps, the mysteriously injured relative of Hank Phelps. It might be that the building was being avoided by the cowboys, on the injured man’s account.
Without lingering long over his survey, the scout started Bear Paw and rode down the hill up which he had once raced with the H-P cowboys tight after him. He hoped that performance was not again to be repeated.
No one appeared to molest him. He was seen, nevertheless, and several cowboys, out behind Hank Phelps’ quarters, gathered in an excited group.
Leaving Bear Paw at a little distance from the log house, Buffalo Bill dismounted and moved briskly forward on foot.
Before he had come within a dozen feet of the front door of the house, Phelps himself appeared in the opening. He seemed, for a moment, as though loath to believe his eyes.
Recovering himself quickly, Phelps stepped through the door and faced the scout. Rage was growing in Phelps’ face.