This dreadful discovery told the scout that Indians had held up the coach. Yet he wondered if it had been done for robbery as well as murder? The officer he recognized as Captain Hinkley, the paymaster; the soldiers were his guard. He was a week ahead of his time; yet he had not managed to get safely through.
The fact that Indians had done the deed, however, disturbed Buffalo Bill. He could not understand it. The marks of half a dozen unshod ponies proved that his first suspicion was correct. Some of Oak Heart’s young braves might have done this. It was true, too, that the driver and soldiers had all been shot with arrows.
“How do I know that robbery has been committed at all?” muttered Buffalo Bill, and he leaped off his horse and made search inside the stage.
It was revealed at once that the marauders must have been frightened off before they came upon Captain Hinkley’s strong-box and bags of coin.
Fear of being caught in the act of murder and rapine usually rides the redskin to undue haste. Had there been whites with this gang of red robbers—either Boyd Bennett himself or any of his men—Cody knew that no small matter would have frightened them away before the object of the hold-up of the stage was accomplished. And the presence of the treasure-chest proved that the marauders must have been driven off.
By what, or whom? Surely his own coming had not done this! Yet the thought gave the scout food for serious reflection. Perhaps the reds might be lurking near and would descend again upon the spot and finish their job by gathering in his scalp as well as that of the driver, the paymaster, and his guards.
He did not touch the money, therefore, but appeared likewise to find nothing in the coach. He even went back to his horse, mounted into the saddle, and set off along the trail at a lope as though proposing to go for help. He had remembered that there was a sandy piece of ground not far away, and here his horse’s hoofbeats would be deadened. As soon as he reached this he halted, dismounted, led his horse up among the rocks, and approached the scene of the catastrophe with great circumspection. Not a bird did he raise by this maneuver.
“They’ve vamosed!” declared Buffalo Bill, with confidence. “A scalping party of reds, and they knew nothing about the money. So it appears, at least. Yet, from all I’ve heard, Bennett is hand and glove with Oak Heart’s people. He’ll hear of this without fail. Now, what had I better do?”
He spent little time in cogitating, however. Cody was a man who made up his mind instinctively, rather than by any slow process of reasoning. He was prompt on this occasion to come to a conclusion.
The party of Indians who had done this hold-up act were not in the immediate vicinity. It was of some moment to Cody, however, to learn how far they had gone, and in what direction. He rustled the treasure-box out of the stage and lugged it up into the rocks, where he found a hiding-place that would do for the nonce. Then he picked up the trail of the redskins afoot and hurried after them.