Chief whinnied softly; his fright was passed. Suddenly the sentinel, who had idly followed Cody’s movements with his glance, became aware of the fact that the scout had disappeared! It was not a dark night, and the plain was open; but the scout was gone as completely as though he had been suddenly wiped out of existence!
“Well, I’ll be switched!” grunted the surprised trooper, stepping forward, and then stopping again. “I could have swore that feller stood by his hoss a minute ago.”
And he was right on that point, of course. But Buffalo Bill had slipped the lariat from his saddle-bow and suddenly dropped into the grass at his horse’s feet. Chief began to crop the grass again, and paid no attention while his master crept away from the herd. Cody knew that the light breeze had brought but a single whiff of Indian to the horse’s nostrils. The redskin could not be far away.
He crept across the plain and finally reached rising ground, where clumps of brush and an occasional tree offered shelter. He had been over this ground before, but he knew that some prowling enemy had been here more recently. He remained almost flat upon the ground and gazed all about him, seeking to see the silhouette of any lurking figure against the sky.
And in this he was successful. At first he overlooked it, believing it to be a tree. Then he saw it move slightly, and finally made out the body of a tall man standing beside a sapling, some distance up the hill. Eagerly the scout crawled up the slope, and finally gained a point above and beyond the stationary figure.
Before he could accomplish more, however, the figure he had watched so carefully suddenly stepped away from the tree. He heard a guttural voice grunt the single syllable:
“Ugh!”
For an instant Cody feared his own presence had been discovered. Then he saw what had drawn the ejaculation from the redskin. A second figure had appeared on the hillside. Cody lay behind a boulder and watched the two men approach each other. There was a rapid interchange of guttural observations in the Sioux tongue. Two scouts were reporting to each other what they had discovered about the bivouac and the numbers of the pony soldiers there encamped.
For all he knew there might be a big party of reds within call. He scarcely believed so, considering how the reds hate to travel by night; but the presence of these scouts suggested, at least, that Boyd Bennett had influence enough over the tribesmen to send these two back to do his dirty work.
However, the scout was minded to make a bold play.