Then the sergeant said:
“Mr. Cody, I wish to confide in you.”
“Well, sergeant.”
“I have a brother who was a wild young fellow, and believed that I had treacherously cheated him out of his ladylove, when I knew nothing about his love for her, and she became my wife. She was not Lucille’s mother, she being the daughter of my second wife.
“Now, my brother never forgave me, and some years after he committed a crime of which I was accused, and it made an outcast, a fugitive of me.
“He married and came West, and the other night when I looked into the face of the man known as Eagle, the outlaw, I felt sure that he was my brother.
“I have not seen my unfortunate brother for many years, but the face, as I saw it by the flickering camp fire’s light, the voice, impressed me that it was Loyd Lamar.
“Now, if he is my brother, he knows that Lucille is my daughter, and that is a relief to my mind. If the outlaw is my brother, and I would almost take oath that he is, I have but one request of you, and that is to kill him, and not capture him to be taken to the fort and hanged.”
“My dear sergeant, I had promised myself I would do that, on account of his wife, and I will be that more anxious to save him from the gallows now that he is suspected of being your brother,” was Buffalo Bill’s reply.
That afternoon they started upon their perilous mission, Buffalo Bill crossing the river at the spot where the camp was and the sergeant riding down to the upper ford, to go over after dark and continue on by the trail to the mountains.