CHAPTER XXV.
UNSEEN FOES.
When Buffalo Bill and the guide left the camp together, the chief went down the valley leading from the Big Horn Mountains, where the camp had been located, hoping to pass some scene that the negro would recall at sight.
Could he do this, Buffalo Bill felt little doubt but that they could in that way find the Lost Valley, for the scout had perfect faith that the negro was sincere in all that he had said, and that it was not the creation of mind diseased.
Brave as he was, good plainsman, also, it would be readily understood by Buffalo Bill how the negro failed to find a given locality when he had been guided thither by some one else, and had simply left there to endeavor to find his way to a place where he could get word of him, the chief of scouts, who was to be secretly urged to come to the rescue of people in distress.
Why some one else—the guide of the party, for instance—had not been sent on this mission Buffalo Bill had been unable to find out from Black Bill.
Starting out alone with Black Bill, and having arrived, as it were, almost upon the scene to which the negro had wished to bring him, Buffalo Bill thought that, perhaps, he would tell him more than he thus far had done, and to encourage him to do so he had said:
“Well, you think we are near the Lost Valley?”
“Sure, sah; very sartin.”
“What do you tell by?”
“Well, sah, dere is trees, and mountains, and valleys dat looks familiarlike, though I can’t jist place ’em; but I is sartin I has seen ’em before.”