“I think, Nomad,” he said, “that I’ll do some scouting around that cabin of the Fool, up on Folly Mountain, before I turn in for the night.”
“Wow!” Nomad gurgled. “He’s gittin’ thicker’n thieves wi’ them cattle what air herdin’ continyul round Gopher Gabe’s. I’m beginnin’ ter think he’s ther wust o’ the lot. So, look out fer him; an’, ’special, look out fer yerself.”
The scout went away, slipping noiselessly down the back stairs, then out into the night.
But he saw no lurking form as he went.
Buffalo Bill knew now that it was a race between Death and Success, in his case and Nomad’s. If he did not soon “get” the leaders of the band he was after, they would “get” him. Evidence was accumulating, showing that the desperadoes had a surprising number of friends and allies, in some places where they were least expected.
He was still worried over the fate of the baron. Since the German had dropped so suddenly and mysteriously out of sight not a word had been received from him or about him. The same was true of Vera Bright. The show manager claimed not to know what had become of the woman, and appeared to be much mystified. It was useless to ask Gopher Gabe. Matt Shepard was being fatally handicapped in his honest efforts to aid the scout by reason of his belief in the statements of the saloon keeper.
During the next day another effort was made to assassinate the scout. He was shot at in passing the window of a house near Gopher Gabe’s saloon. He jumped for the door and smashed it in, after the shot was fired, and saw the disappearing heels of a man who dived through an open window into an alley. When he reached that window the scout found that the scoundrel had vanished. But what view he had almost convinced him that the man was White-eyed Moses. The house was unoccupied; and the would-be assassin had apparently stationed himself there and waited for the scout to pass along.
The shooting created some excitement in the street; men also came out of Gopher Gabe’s place to investigate it. The scout could only tell them that some one had shot at him from the empty house.
As White-eyed Moses was known to be one of Gopher Gabe’s intimates, and the baron had been set to watch Gopher Gabe’s as well as the Casino, the scout’s belief that within Gopher Gabe’s establishment, or the Casino, lay hid the mystery of the baron’s disappearance, became more than ever established.