One of the passengers by the stage was the marshal of Calumet Springs, who had with him a woman, Miss Vera Bright, whom he had brought back to Blossom Range.
She stared at Buffalo Bill’s prisoner.
“I think it will be well if we take them into a room here together, and see if they won’t do some talking,” was the scout’s statement to the Calumet Springs marshal.
“If you can get anything out of her, you’re ahead of me,” the marshal admitted; “she fit like a wildcat, when I told her she would have to come back here, and only stopped it when I threatened I’d put irons on her. She weakened at that, and come along; but she’s a plum furious beauty, I tell you, git her started.”
The blonde woman and Juniper Joe were taken into a back room of the stage office, where they were brought face to face. In the room at the time was the marshal of Calumet Springs, with Nomad and the baron, and, of course, the scout, together with the local manager of the stage line.
Buffalo Bill, a shrewd reader of human nature, opened the ball by telling the woman that Juniper Joe was under arrest for the murder of the man called Jackson Dane, but whom Joe had said was Tim Benson.
Her face paled at that, and her eyes flashed, and she turned on the prisoner like a tigress.
“Is that so?” she cried.
“It’s a lie!” Juniper Joe declared to her.